Most of the patients of various practitioners have already been vaccinated against covid and there are still dozens of doses left in the fridge. They are therefore offering vaccinations even to those they do not keep in their records. Otherwise, they’ll have to throw the vaccines away.
Practitioners have had to order large, 100-dose packs of Vaxzevria vaccine from AstraZeneca or Spikevax from Moderna, or half the amount of a single-dose Janssen vaccine from Johnson & Johnson. Vaccines from Pfizer/BioNTech are not available.
Physicians cannot share vaccines among themselves or split the packages. However, they can invite patients of other colleagues or those whose doctor does not vaccinate against covid. With this in mind, an online table with a list of participating doctors was created a few days ago in collaboration with scientists from the CTU.
“Practices that want to do so share information with the public about the number of vaccines they have available,” Ludmila Bezdíčková, the Prague doctor who initiated the project, explained to Právo.
Deadlines expire
“People who want to be vaccinated and do not have a practitioner that provides vaccinations can report to us,” she added. Most practitioners describe the reason they open their practices to outsiders as simply because they no longer have anyone among their patients to vaccinate. Some of them have gone to centres because of the long wait for the vaccine to be delivered, some have refused the type of preparation offered, and the rest have already received the vaccine.
“Since Moderna will expire very soon and will otherwise have to be disposed of, we have got involved in this way,” Jakub Mitro, a general practitioner who practices in Pilsen, wrote to Právo. He added that he had been receiving patients from colleagues since the beginning of the vaccination, when the delivery date could not be relied upon.
The last ten doses of AstraZeneca’s vaccine were also left over for the doctor Hana Švorcová from Prague 4. “Several people have contacted us, two patients a day,” she said. Information about the free capacity of practitioners is on the website.