Once vaccines for the novel coronavirus become available, people who wish to be vaccinated should generally do so in the municipalities where they are registered as residents, according to a Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry proposal submitted to a subcommittee of the Health Sciences Council on Thursday.
In the health ministry's plan, municipal governments will be in charge of vaccinating residents. The municipal governments will issue vouchers to residents based on residence registries, and residents can voluntarily go to vaccination sites, such as medical facilities and community centers, designated by municipal governments.
For people who live away from their registered municipalities for reasons including long-term hospitalization, education and work postings, the government plans to allow them to be vaccinated in locations outside of their registered municipalities upon request.
Several companies are developing novel coronavirus vaccines, some of which require extremely low-temperature storage. The central government plans to ***obtain*** 3,000 freezers that can maintain a temperature of minus 75 C and 7,500 freezers that can maintain a temperature of minus 20 C, and to distribute them fairly according to municipalities' populations, with each municipality receiving at least one.
Vaccines will be distributed to municipalities according to the amount received from the manufacturers. If multiple manufacturers' vaccines become available at the same time in the country, each vaccination site will only use one type of vaccine in principle to avoid confusion.
Read more from The Japan News at https://japannews.yomiuri.co.jp/
