A dress rehearsal to test a new method for efficient mass vaccination of elderly people against the novel coronavirus was conducted in Mishima, Shizuoka Prefecture, on Thursday.
In a primary school gymnasium, about 30 elderly people rolled up their left sleeves and sat waiting their turn in a series of booths as doctors and other medical workers moved from booth to booth, going through the motions of vaccinating them with needle-less dummy syringes. Each one-person booth had cardboard walls on three sides.
A medical association of the city has proposed the method in which medical staff rather than vaccine recipients move around -- the opposite of the usual approach -- to administer shots in a way that puts less of a burden on elderly people.
"We confirmed that the burden on the medical staff was reduced and the vaccinations proceeded smoothly [using the new method]," said Yusuke Ikeda, the president of the association.
From April, the city government plans to send vouchers for vaccinations to about 32,000 people aged 65 or older.
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