AstraZeneca to be used for everyone over 18 years old

Ljubljana – The Covid-19 vaccination task force at the National Institute of Public Health (NIJZ) has decided the AstraZeneca vaccine will be administered to everyone over 18 years old without any restrictions, a member of the group Alojz Ihan told commercial broadcaster POP TV on Monday. The head of the group, Bojana Beović, confirmed this for the STA.

According to Beović, the AstraZeneca vaccine will be administered to people over 18 years old in line with the priority groups from the vaccination strategy.

“We’ve decided to vaccinate without age restrictions given that EMA had reviewed documents finding no connection to either age or gender, meaning there is no reason to restrict the vaccination to a certain group of population,” Ihan explained.

In line with the vaccination strategy, people over 60 years old remain the priority.

Ihan warned that the virus was spreading in the country, and that the deliberation on the AstraZeneca vaccine had caused delays in the vaccination.

There are currently 16,600 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine at the NIJZ’s central warehouse.

“Given that the risk is high for all age groups in the current epidemiological situation, if there will be leftover vaccine, it will have to be offered to those who want to be vaccinated. Thus, younger people too will be able to get vaccinated,” said Ihan.

The supply of the vaccine will increase in this and the next quarter, especially Pfizer, the national coordinator for vaccination logistics, Jelko Kacin, told POP TV. The Janssen vaccine is also coming.

“By the end of this quarter we will have 250,000 shots of Janssen, which means 250,000 vaccinated people, while the monthly supply of the Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine in this period, early summer, will rise to almost 300,000 shots a month,” Kacin told POP TV, adding that everyone who would want to be vaccinated should get the shot by July.

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