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Malta, Hungary and Denmark topping EU vaccine tables - what can we learn from them?

Different approaches to the roll-out have been taken across the EU.

IRELAND’S VACCINE ROLL-OUT has slowed down, with continued delivery shortfalls hampering the health service’s progress.

During the week HSE chief Paul Reid expressed his frustration in particular with AstraZeneca, stating that repeated and sometimes last-minute reductions to deliveries had “rocked” confidence in the company.

Officials have stressed that Ireland is, by European Union standards, working its way through the population at a decent pace, ahead of some of the bloc’s big players like France and Germany. 

But a small number of countries in the EU have steamed ahead, despite the fact that they are part of the same vaccine pool, with an entitlement to doses proportionate to their population.

Malta

Although there have been criticisms in some countries of the European Union vaccine strategy, Malta’s health minister Chris Fearne has said the pooled purchasing of vaccine doses prevented competition that would have left Malta out in the cold.

“Imagine the situation had we not done this together,” he said in an interview last month. “Had member states gone their own way… there would have been a race between member states, so the larger member states would have probably had access to the vaccines, while the smaller member states would have lagged behind, possibly not even having had access at all.”

At that point the country had given at least one jab to 10% of the population of 515,000 people – now around 20% of the population have received a first dose.

The country had ordered two million doses in total through the EU procurement scheme – enough to immunise its population twice over. The government in Malta also ordered any additional doses that the European Commission put up for availability.

Some countries opted not to take up their full population-based allocation and officials in Malta have said their decision to order as many doses as they possibly could has helped them with the steady progress they have been making. 

Malta has also used a network of community health centres to dispense doses as quickly as they arrived.

Hungary

In Hungary, around 1.5 million people – around 11.9%  of the 9.8 million-population have received at least a first jab so far. All those who have registered on the government’s website can be vaccinated by early April, officials have said.

The only EU member to be administering both the Chinese Sinopharm and Russian Sputnik V jabs, Hungary has blamed Brussels for slow deliveries of western-developed vaccines.

Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s chief-of-staff Gergely Gulyas this week said Hungary’s vaccine success is “thanks to the Chinese vaccines”. He was speaking as he announced the arrival in Budapest of a new batch of 450,000 Sinopharm doses from China.

Along with Hungary, the United Arab Emirates, Cambodia, Peru and Zimbabwe have all started administering the Sinopharm vaccine, which its makers say is 79% effective. It has not been approved by the European Medicines Agency.

Hungary is one of just three countries in the EU to begin administering doses of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine ahead of approval by the European Medicines Agency. 

This vaccine works in a similar way to the AstraZeneca/Oxford jab, but has a 91.6% efficacy, according to trial results.

More than a dozen nations have authorised its use, including Belarus, Armenia, Iran, Algeria, Argentina, South Korea and Venezuela.

In the midst of its steady vaccine progress, Hungary is still dealing with record numbers of Covid-19 cases and patients requiring hospitalisation.

Officials said coronavirus hospital patient numbers reached a record high of 8,329, while a record 8,312 new infection cases was also posted.

Around 16,500 Hungarians have died in total due to the coronavirus since the pandemic began. A strict lockdown, including school closures, began Monday.

Denmark

Denmark has been a leader in Europe since the start of the year. By 15 January it had given vaccines to 2.2% of its population of 5.8 million.

Early on in the roll-out this was, in part, due to a decision not to set aside half the vaccine allotment to ensure patients got their second dose. The country’s officials decided to delay the second dose of the Pfizer vaccine by up to six weeks, rather than the recommended three.

In a similar strategy to the one taken in the UK, as soon as the vaccines came into the country, as many people as possible were given their first doses.

The country has been credited with well-oiled logistics and a swift campaign in nursing homes, where almost everyone who wanted a vaccine had received one by the middle of January.

The country also attributes the strong start to its universal healthcare system, governed by easily-mobilised local regions.

Denmark has a centralised national register which assigns each resident a personal identification number linking them to government services.

Health records are linked to a person’s ID number and this has helped the health service to categorise residents into different priority groups, with an accompanying app that allows health officials to communicate with people.

How does Ireland’s approach compare?

Ireland does not have an integrated and centralised system such as the one in Denmark.

The absence of a database for the various cohorts in society has been a clear problem throughout the roll-out, with the health service relying on GPs to compile names and contact details from their own records when vaccination of the over-70s began recently.

Now that the programme includes people at very high risk of severe disease, the HSE is depending on hospital groups – and again GPs in some cases – to identify patients who fall into this category and to contact them. 

An entirely new IT system had to be built in order to manage and track the roll-out. This is currently being used, with further updates to be added as the health system moves through the various cohorts. 

In terms of orders, the Irish government, like Malta’s, has not held back, ordering the full allocation (1% of the EU’s total pool of vaccines) of each vaccine approved for use in the EU. 

When it comes to the accessing of further stocks of vaccines, the government has said it will take surplus doses from other countries if they are offered – but only if they are EMA- approved vaccines.

Officials have been wary of commenting on vaccines such as the Sputnik V one before the regulator has given them the green light. It is unlikely they would follow the Hungarian government’s lead and source vaccines that have not been approved by the EMA. 

The EMA recently launched a rolling review of the Russian vaccine, but there is no indication of when this will progress to a formal marketing authorisation application. 

Unlike Denmark, Ireland has been focusing on following the two-dose schedule with vaccines. As of 9 March 396,089 first doses had been administered and 157,072 people were fully vaccinated.

Just over 8% of the population has received a first dose and 3% are fully vaccinated.

More than 66,000 residents of long term care facilities are fully vaccinated and over 87,000 frontline healthcare workers have received both doses. 

The health service has said Ireland has the infrastructure in place; vaccinators are trained, mass vaccination centres are opening up and expanding, additional staff are being recruited. The sticking point, it says, is the unreliable supply of vaccine doses. 

Despite this uncertainty, the government is still confident it will be able to deliver almost one million vaccines in April, 1.2 million in May and 1.68 million in June. 

- With reporting from AFP.

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    Mute Rob LLoyd
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    Jul 22nd 2021, 2:45 PM

    With all the uncertainty and clarity about travel, its up to us as people to ensure we have all the relevant paperwork and documents BEFORE traveling, when this story broke last weekend, some people were already in Malta before the restrictions on free travel were lifted. Stay Safe Ireland ☀️

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    Mute VinnoH
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    Jul 22nd 2021, 8:19 PM

    @Rob LLoyd: Are you joking, a junior minister says it is safe to travel without a covid pass and they are stranded instead of on holiday!

    51
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    Mute HectorPickaxe
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    Jul 22nd 2021, 8:30 PM

    @VinnoH: The latest travel advice for most countries is readily available online. It is completely the responsibility of those travelling to check it. Ignorance or misinformation is not an excuse

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    Mute Vonvonic
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    Jul 22nd 2021, 8:42 PM

    @VinnoH: They could have looked it up on 3 seconds. I bet they researched where you could buy designer handbags.

    87
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    Mute The Divils Avocado
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    Jul 22nd 2021, 8:44 PM

    @Vonvonic: sounds like someone hasn’t been out of the country in a while….

    15
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    Mute Neil Neart
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    Jul 22nd 2021, 8:54 PM

    @VinnoH: trust a politician???? LOL.

    17
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    Mute lelookcoco
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    Jul 22nd 2021, 9:02 PM

    @Neil Neart: Seriously people thought a hand written card was an acceptable official document. And my passport is written on papyrus with a quill…..

    74
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    Mute Vonvonic
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    Jul 22nd 2021, 9:04 PM

    @The Divils Avocado: I’ve had the same handbag since my holy communion. Nothing at all wrong with it.

    18
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    Mute Luan Willis
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    Jul 22nd 2021, 9:40 PM

    @The Divils Avocado: Who has been out of the country lately?

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    Mute Rob LLoyd
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    Jul 22nd 2021, 10:41 PM

    @VinnoH: ‘A Junior Minister Said’, after the last 16 months we have all had, with last minute changes, back tracking and U-turns, and leaky information from some ministers, I would take that advise with a pinch of salt, we need to take responsibility of our own actions, I have been bombarded with Emails from Aer Lingus since Christmas telling me to book and fly abroad, only I can’t, my decision is based on all the relevant information available.

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    Mute John Hagin Meade
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    Jul 23rd 2021, 8:54 AM

    @Luan Willis: The last time I was out of the country was in 2008, for me that’s recent. In my lifetime (I’m 70) I have been out of the country about 6 times.

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    Mute Linda Oreilly
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    Jul 22nd 2021, 2:50 PM

    Everyone knows that Malta is enforcing some of the strictest rules yet these people said ‘rules don;t apply to us’….hope they had to pay for their entire quarantine period.

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    Mute Eoin Jackson
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    Jul 22nd 2021, 2:55 PM

    @Linda Oreilly: why would you hope they have to pay for their entire quarantine period? You sound incredibly bitter. One of our elected representatives tweeted before they traveled that if the DCC did not arrive by then the vaccine card filled out would have been accepted. Given this person’s position their advise was taken. They now have their DCC and will presumably be released for quarantine. Why do you want them to pay the full amount? As a punishment for traveling fully vaccinated id it? You sound like a lovely person…

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    Mute Bill Spill
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    Jul 22nd 2021, 6:17 PM

    @Eoin Jackson: I think you both sound lovely

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    Mute Eoin Jackson
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    Jul 22nd 2021, 6:50 PM

    @Bill Spill: thanks Bill!

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    Mute Linda Oreilly
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    Jul 22nd 2021, 7:09 PM

    @Eoin Jackson: We have travelled to Malta lots of times and we always check out the restrictions from their gov. pages. We would never go by what an irish rep would tell us….always better to check the country you are travelling to….

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    Mute Victor Feldman
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    Jul 22nd 2021, 7:25 PM

    @Linda Oreilly: you really have to be naive to trust irish civil servant advice.. They said that they weren’t able to predict the enormous amount of calls on their coved cert line, that they are overwhelmed with!!
    Where I ask you, are their so called experts, with their university qualifications
    … What does this have to say about their levels of competence?

    26
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    Mute Eoin Jackson
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    Jul 22nd 2021, 7:44 PM

    @Linda Oreilly: oh no Linda, I 100% agree with you on that front, absolutely spot on! They were foolish, i can certainly agree with that. But at the end of the day, they did not cause much harm only to their own time and pocket. Like id be annoyed if they had forged vaccine passes or something, absolutely! They travelled fully vaccinated without the required paperwork, they were put in MHQ until paperwork was sorted and I would imagine then released. A good lesson for them but I don’t understand the abuse they are getting. Or why they should pay for 2 weeks MHQ if they were only there 2-3 days. Charge them the 2-3 days worth. Like everyone is young at some point and i would like to consider myself still young, learning and going to make mistakes. I wouldn’t like to be vilified for it and I don’t really think these people should be either. Is basically my point.

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    Mute Alan McArdle
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    Jul 22nd 2021, 8:40 PM

    @Victor Feldman: nothing. It says more about the fools ringing the number that shouldn’t be. They are the ones clogging the system.

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    Mute Alan McArdle
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    Jul 22nd 2021, 8:41 PM

    @Victor Feldman: nothing. It says more about the eejits ringing the number that shouldn’t be. They are the ones clogging the system.

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    Mute Michael Burke
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    Jul 22nd 2021, 9:22 PM

    @Bill Spill: ah Bill, that’s lovely. A really lovely thing to say.

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    Mute This time its personable!
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    Jul 22nd 2021, 2:27 PM

    The Maltese One! I hope they’re not ‘Cross’!

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    Mute Paul Mcnevin
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    Jul 22nd 2021, 3:34 PM

    @This time its personable!: If they are they can have a few Malt-easers.

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    Mute Tessa Madden
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    Jul 22nd 2021, 9:28 PM

    @Paul Mcnevin: hehehehe

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    Mute Angelika Passet
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    Jul 22nd 2021, 4:00 PM

    If you travel to Hungary without the digital cert.

    All those entering Hungary (unless transiting) must agree to enter mandatory, legally enforceable 10-day quarantine. If the person has no place of residency in Hungary, they must enter a government designated place of quarantine.

    The quarantined individual may request from the authorities’ permission to have two PCR tests conducted within 5 days of arrival, which must be taken 48 hours apart. If the two PCR tests are negative, the authorities can exempt the individual from their quarantine obligation. The cost of the PCR tests must be met by the individual.

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    Mute Contrary Mary
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    Jul 22nd 2021, 2:55 PM

    So nice to hear our government has their priorities straight. Ffs. Couldn’t get my nephew into a school for 2.5 years, but at least the ignorami helped some fools who travelled knowing those cards would not be accepted or didn’t bother to check.

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    Mute Anthony Clark
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    Jul 22nd 2021, 3:21 PM

    @Contrary Mary: Country is run by the whims of the media – whoevers story is more click bait worthy- gets into the headlines and gets their issues sorted pronto.

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    Mute Andrew English
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    Jul 22nd 2021, 4:41 PM

    @Contrary Mary: they were told by the minister their card would be accepted. Get your facts right.

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    Mute Contrary Mary
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    Jul 22nd 2021, 5:50 PM

    @Andrew English: Why would a minister HERE be the foo l you believed? Do you go to a minister HERE to get a visa to the US? No. You check through your destination’s government.

    67
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    Mute Gerard
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    Jul 22nd 2021, 8:40 PM

    While Malta may be the outlier if it truly is the only part of the EU not accepting vaccination cards, refusing anything but the DCC still seems entirely reasonable.

    That was the whole point of it: so there was one standardised format everyone could recognise that was difficult to forge.

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    Mute Simon Fitzpatrick
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    Jul 22nd 2021, 8:47 PM

    Well … I spoke to the “help” line last week after a 30 minute hold only to be promised a cert by Monday by post – my wife’s cert came but not mine.

    Called Tuesday and was on hold for 5hr30 min before being cut off bang on 6:30pm when the call centre closed

    Called Wednesday and waited 4hr30 before speaking to a man who promised my cert “this evening or tomorrow” via email – but nothing so far

    Took an antigen test today as a back up in case the French border guards question to validity of the HSE bit of card with handwriting.

    Travelling tomorrow … any little faith in the HSE or anything they do now completely vanished … unfortunately

    27
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    Mute kevin mc cormack
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    Jul 22nd 2021, 7:55 PM

    Good for them, hopefully they can now enjoy their holidays

    16
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    Mute Joe Johnson
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    Jul 22nd 2021, 2:32 PM

    That is a disgrace

    25
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    Mute D. Memery
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    Jul 22nd 2021, 2:43 PM

    @Joe Johnson: why, they flew over knowing their documentation wasn’t acceptable to the Maltese authorities?

    299
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    Mute Sal Paradise
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    Jul 22nd 2021, 8:57 PM

    @D. Memery: It’s the journal. You have to be outraged. It’s a disgrace….grrrr….

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    Mute Paul Furey
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    Jul 22nd 2021, 9:08 PM

    @Joe Johnson: no its not

    8
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    Mute VinnoH
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    Jul 22nd 2021, 8:11 PM

    I arrived in Athens today, no request for vaccine cert, no request for a person locator form (PLF) and yet barely allowed on the aerlingus flight because we had trouble producing our PLF. This is a virus you cannot control a virus, end this ridiculous carry on. By the way I do not appreciate the journals editorial control of commentary.

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    Mute Hugh Mc Donnell
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    Jul 22nd 2021, 9:14 PM

    I’m still confused as to what they want, is a digital cert different than the paper cert that was emailed to me during the week even though they contain the same information. Can I go online and download it

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    Mute Colm OS
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    Jul 22nd 2021, 9:26 PM

    @Hugh Mc Donnell: no its the same thing, you can make it digital by scanning it into the covid tracker app.
    The qr code on the paper cert contains basic information about you and your vaccine status which when scanned, allows the authority to confirm everything is legit by cross checking the name on the cert with your passport. The mirror has done a good explainer with step by step instructions https://www.irishmirror.ie/news/irish-news/how-your-digital-covid-cert-24558938?utm_source=sharebar&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=sharebar

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    Mute Appaddy
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    Jul 22nd 2021, 11:51 PM

    Could we call them the Malteezers?

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