All frontliners, vulnerable people and elderly inoculated by end of May

Check out how Malta’s timeline for the coronavirus vaccination programme will play out over the next nine months

6 January 2021, 2:36pm
by Laura Calleja

2 min read

Mary Pizzuto, 94, was the first resident at St Vincent de Paul to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. All vulnerable people, care home residents and front liners will be inoculated by May.

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Health Minister Chris Fearne has given a timeline of how the COVID-19 vaccine programme in Malta will be implemented.

The EU has so far given authorisation to the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines. The latter was approved today and is expected to start being rolled out by the end of the week.

Malta has 600,000 doses ordered from Pfizer and 100,000 doses from Moderna. Both vaccines require the person to take two doses of the vaccine 21 days and 28 days apart, respectively.

Fearne said Malta’s policy was to reserve the second dose once a person is inoculated so that the timeframes recommended by the manufacturer are kept.

He said that around 1,400 COVID-19 vaccines were administered in the first week of Malta’s vaccination programme.

There have been no significant side-effects reported from those who received the vaccine so far.

Fearne said there was no indication yet of when the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines being developed in the UK will receive approval from the European Medicines Agency.

COVID-19 vaccine timeline

Timeline based on delivery of Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines only. Timeframes can be brought forward when more COVID-19 vaccines are authorised by the European Medicines Agency.

• 1st week

1,400 vaccines administered

• 2nd week

4,000 vaccines would be administered by end of week 2

• End of January

16,000 people would be inoculated with their first dose of the vaccine by the end of January. By this time, Malta would have received 32,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine.

• End of March

Malta would have 95,000 doses of the vaccine.

• Mid-May

Invitations will start being issued to the rest of the population to get vaccinated with priority being given to those aged 55 and over.

• End of May

All frontliners, all people living in institutions and care homes, and all vulnerable people will have been vaccinated.

• End of June

Malta would have received 290,000 doses of the vaccine.

• End of September

Malta would have received 500,000 doses of the vaccine by which time the authorities are expecting to achieve herd immunity.

Laura Calleja is features editor at MaltaToday