Paramedics and clinical lab technicians will be allowed to administer COVID-19 vaccine shots, Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu Kato announced Tuesday, as part of government measures to accelerate the inoculation of the elderly population.
Other measures include increasing financial support to medical institutions that are administering vaccinations.
Resolving the shortage of personnel to administer shots is said to be the biggest challenge in accelerating the vaccination program. Currently, dentists are allowed to give COVID-19 vaccine shots as an exceptional measure, in addition to doctors and nurses.
Adding paramedics and CLTs to the list of people allowed to administer shots is expected to provide a significant boost, as there are about 64,000 licensed paramedics and about 200,000 licensed CLTs, according to the government.
"We want to ask for as much cooperation as possible, without interfering with the necessary testing framework and emergency transport systems," Kato said at a press conference on Tuesday.
He also said the government wants to ask pharmacists to help with medical interviews prior to administering the shots, and to ask radiologists as well as pharmacists to observe people after they have been inoculated.
"We want to secure tens of thousands of paramedics and others. We'll do our best to dispatch them to places where there is a shortage of personnel to administer vaccines," Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said to reporters on Monday, after visiting a mass vaccination center operated by the Self-Defense Forces that opened on the day in Tokyo.
The government will also provide hospitals and clinics with 100,000 yen if they administer at least 50 shots per day. This is in addition to the 2,070 yen per shot paid for doctors to administer vaccines during the daytime on weekdays.
The government will provide an additional incentive of 2,000 yen per shot for clinics that administer 100 shots or more per week for at least four weeks by the end of July. Clinics that give at least 150 shots per week over the same period will receive 3,000 yen per shot.
Hospitals that set up special vaccination frameworks, by canceling regular medical services or taking other measures, for at least one day a week for at least four weeks will receive an additional 7,550 yen per hour for each doctor, and 2,760 yen per hour for each nurse and other staff.
The government also plans to let doctors conduct pre-inoculation medical interviews online or by phone from outside the vaccination venue, to improve efficiency.
Through these measures, the government hopes to meet its target of completing vaccinations of the elderly by the end of July.
"We want to bolster local governments' efforts to improve the vaccination system by supporting medical institutions and others," Kato said during a press conference on Monday.
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