Denmark’s Fall Vaccination Campaign
Combined COVID and Influenza inoculation campaign coming
🦠Pandemic🦠
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Danish health authorities have tabled their plans for a major COVID and influenza vaccination campaign to roll out this fall.
Vulnerable elderly seniors 85 years old and older along with seniors in care will get their first crack at an additional booster dose beginning on September 15. Vaccination teams will inoculate seniors in care in their nursing homes.
Then, on October 1, the vaccination campaign begins in earnest. Invitations to get vaccinated should arrive by e-Boks before October 1. Once an invitation is received a vaccination appointments can then be booked online at vacciner.dk
Danish National Health Board Director Søren Brostrøm:
“It is important that those who are at increased risk of a serious coronavirus infection or influenza are protected before infection activity increases this fall. We therefore encourage everyone to get vaccinated as soon as they have the opportunity. This is the way we can safely get through this winter without too much infection.”
Brostrøm says this time around the focus of the vaccination effort is not to prevent infection but rather to protect those most at high-risk and those in vulnerable populations.
“You must take the vaccine for your own sake this time. The older you are, the greater the risk of becoming seriously ill with the coronavirus. Increasing age is the overriding risk factor.”
Who is eligible to get vaccinated?
COVID vaccine booster dose:
Everyone 50 years old and older
People under the age of 50 who are considered high risk and their relatives
Healthcare employees
Seniors care and social workers who are in close contact with high-risk patients
Pregnant women
Influenza vaccine:
Everyone aged 65 years old and over
Pregnant women in the 2nd and 3rd trimester
Children 2-6 years old
People with certain chronic diseases
Healthcare staff
Those who are eligible for both a COVID booster dose and the influenza vaccine can get both at the same time.
Where?
Vaccination centers will largely be in major metropolitan areas. Those will be accentuated by vaccination availability in some medical centers, private clinics, and pop-up sites in smaller towns and rural areas.
Which Vaccines?
The COVID booster dose campaign will use the new bivalent vaccines recently recommended for use by the European Medicines Agency
“We expect the new vaccines to provide better protection, especially against the Omicron variants, which we expect will dominate in the winter season.”
Danish Health Minister Magnus Heunicke says the approval of the new bivalent vaccines targeting the Omicron variant is “perfect timing”.
He says Denmark has secured 4.5 million doses of the new vaccines.
“Denmark will be assured of the latest updated vaccines that provide the best protection. And we have it in writing.”
Heunicke says there won’t be delivery issues or delays this time with the first batch of doses scheduled to arrive as early as next week.
Heunicke also clarified that only people in the target groups can get a second booster dose. He says anyone outside the target groups will not be able to get another vaccine dose.
That said, Heunicke did leave the door open a crack saying that once the big part of the booster dose campaign gets underway in October, they will reassess things to see if eligibility for a booster dose needs to be expanded.
Vaccination Campaign
Statens Serum Institute Professional Director Tyra Grove Krause says it is a matter of timing to maximize the protection offered by administering another booster dose.
“What you can see is that the fall infection wave in previous years took hold in late September and early October.”
Krause says the SSI is not expecting to have to reintroduce any restrictions over the fall and winter.
She says the pure saturation of the Omicron variants is helping to add a layer of immune protection across the population. Krause says roughly one-quarter of the population has had an Omicron variant infection.
“If you have previously been infected and at the same time received the vaccine, you have robust protection via hybrid immunity, but elderly seniors do not have the same degree of hybrid immunity. It is this group in particular that it is important to protect with the vaccines.”
Bivalent Vaccines
The head of the Danish Medicines Agency says the new bivalent vaccines, designed to target the original coronavirus strain and the Omicron variant, do not trigger any additional side effects.
Lars Bo Nielsen:
“The reason the vaccines are updated is that the spike protein in the coronavirus is mutated in the Omicron variant, when compared to the original Wuhan variant. This [the new vaccines] means that it works better. But the amount of mRNA is the same, so we don't expect any different side effects from the new vaccines, only that they will be more effective.”
How effective are the new vaccines against BA.5, which currently dominates Denmark?
“The beauty of this is that if a new variant comes out over the winter, the fact that we vaccinate with bivalent vaccines can give us a broader immune system and a broader protection that also lasts longer.”
Old Vaccine Doses
With the new variant-focused vaccines taking over, Health Minister Magnus Heunicke was asked what this means for the millions of doses of the ‘old’ vaccine still sitting in Danish stockpiles. Will they be thrown out?
“We did have to initially buy more vaccines than we needed. Because we had to bet on more horses. But now the situation is different. I cannot say how many doses will end up being wasted, because the number is constantly changing. But the goal is for them to be donated to other places in the world, and we have succeeded in doing that with 10 million doses. When you look at the overall handling of the pandemic, the vaccines play a huge role.”
Hospital Capacity
Søren Brostrøm was also asked about hospital capacity and staffing going into the fall and winter with another expected COVID infection wave. He says Denmark is in a much different position than it was a year or two ago. Brostrøm says if need be overall capacity can be increased.
“There is a large capacity if we really want to go there. But we don't expect that we will have to.”
He also expects that vaccine uptake in Denmark for a 4th dose will be very high. Brostrøm notes that so far older age groups and vulnerable populations have a vaccination rate of between 85% to 90%. He expects to see vaccination rates reach similar levels with this booster dose campaign.