The government is expected to secure enough vaccine for all the people in Japan, but it remains to be seen whether a system for vaccinating a wide range of people in a concentrated manner can be established in a short period, as municipalities will be in charge of administering the shots.
To maintain the quality of mRNA vaccines, it is necessary to transport them in a frozen state from production plants in the United States or Europe to vaccination sites in Japan. According to the government's plan, the manufacturers are responsible for transporting vaccines to such sites, while local governments are responsible for storing them.
The vaccine of U.S. pharmaceutical giant Pfizer Inc. must be stored at minus 70 C, while that of U.S. biotech firm Moderna Inc. is stored at minus 20 C. On the other hand, British company AstraZeneca PLC's vaccines do not use mRNA and can be stored at 2 C to 8 C without freezing.
The government has secured a total of 10,500 freezers, but the number to be delivered to municipalities has yet to be determined. To use thawed Pfizer vaccines with zero waste, it is necessary to inject about 100 people in a single day. But the risk of infections spreading may increase if too many people gather at an immunization venue.
The municipal government of Kawasaki, which has a population of about 1.5 million, participated in a central government research project in fiscal 2014 to simulate vaccinating residents of the city. According to the results, administering the shots takes about two minutes per person, and it would take more than six weeks for 70% of the city's population -- 1.1 million people -- to receive a single dose, even if about 600 medical institutions, including clinics run by private doctors, cooperated for 10 hours a week.
There are about 300,000 residents who are 65 or older in Kawasaki. Even if the number of people vaccinated is limited to this number, there will still be a huge amount of clerical work, such as sorting out venues and handling reservations.
"The task of securing doctors and nurses alone will be difficult. We will need to mobilize as many city officials as we do in an election [including the workforce to count votes]," a city government official said.
Kazunori Oishi, director of the Toyama Institute of Health, said: "The vaccine needs to be injected into the muscle. To vaccinate many elderly people, we need cooperation from organizations such as medical associations. The central and prefectural governments should be actively involved in the establishment of vaccination systems by municipal governments."
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