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The Ministry of Health presented to the Unified Conference of the Regions the new vaccination plan, with which we intend to accelerate the administration, so far going slowly.
The premise made by the ministers of regional affairs, Maria Stella Gelmini, of health, Roberto Speranza, and for disabilities, Erika Stefani, who presented the program on Thursday with the head of civil protection, Fabrizio Curcio, and the emergency commissioner, Francesco Paolo Figliuolo, is that “Everyone respects his turn and ceases mischief”.
In particular, the minister Gelmini stressed that vaccines must go to the “categories that really have the right” and that in this we must follow the exemplary behavior of the President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, who has correctly waited his turn “.
But what does the new vaccination plan provide? The substantial difference with respect to the previous one concerns the identification of five new priority categories.
New vaccination plan, priority categories
“We have identified certain categories and age groups. We follow these criteria with clarity, transparency and respect for the rules ”, said Gelmini again.
Compared to the previous plan, therefore, 5 new categories have been identified into which the population is divided, on the basis of age and the presence of pathological conditions. Priority will be given to category 1, and then to go down.
• Category 1. High fragility (extremely vulnerable people; severe disability);
• Category 2. People aged between 70 and 79;
• Category 3. People aged between 60 and 69;
• Category 4. People under the age of 60 with pathologies or immunological compromise situations that can increase the risk of getting sick, but who are not in the condition of severity of extremely vulnerable people;
• Category 5. Rest of the population under the age of 60
In addition, regardless of age, they are considered priority in the administration vaccine for teaching and non-teaching, school and university staff, the Armed Forces, Police and public aid, penitentiary services and residential communities.
The new rules on vaccines
The new plan therefore restarts from the point identified as fundamental by the previous plan: the vaccination of the elderly over 80 and people with high frailty. The vaccine will therefore continue to be administered to these categories of people and the aim is to complete the vaccination of health personnel, school personnel, military and law enforcement.
In parallel, however, taking into account the availability of vaccines, people belonging to the 5 new categories can be vaccinated, in descending order, starting with people over 70 years old.
The new plan also provides that, if the vaccine doses available allow it, it can be vaccinated within the workplace, regardless of age “unless vaccination is carried out on site, by health professionals available there, in order to achieve a significant gain in terms of timeliness, effectiveness and level of adherence”.
What are the people who fall into the category of high frailty
The note issued by the Ministry of Health also specifies the guidelines for identifying people who fall into the highly frail category: “In defining the groups to be given priority in the vaccination campaign, account was taken, also through a comparison with scientific societies of reference, of the particular fragility of some categories of citizens suffering from specific pathologies evaluated as particularly critical as they are related to the lethality rate associated with COVID-19 due to pre-existing organ damage or impaired immune response capacity to SARS-CoV-2, defined as extremely vulnerable (…) and those with severe disabilities ”, reads the document released by the ministry.
These are defined in a table that groups the pathologies and disabilities evaluated as serious and for which it is believed that the patient must be vaccinated to be protected from the hypothesis of contracting the virus (here the table).
Vaccination plan, timing
Once the priority categories have been reached, the mass vaccination campaign should start at the end of the month. The goal is to vaccinate without stopping in the hubs identified by the Regions and start administering 300,000 ampoules a day, a number that is almost double the current one.
From April to June, with the increase in the expected doses arriving, Italy should have the possibility of reaching at least 400 thousand administrations per day. To make things easier, Poste Italiane has made its free platform available for booking the vaccine in Lombardy, Sicily, Calabria, Marche, Abruzzo and Basilicata.
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