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Travel to and from Norway could resume ‘near the end of May’

A senior official from the Norwegian Directorate of Public Health (NIPH) has expressed optimism over the return of travel before the end of the spring.

Published: 2 March 2021 17:00 CET

Residents over the age of 45 years in Norway will have received their first dose of the Covid vaccine by May, according to the current schedule for vaccination.

That would provide for a safe easing of the country’s travel restrictions, Geir Bukholm, director of infection control with the health authority, told newspaper VG.

“I would assume that we can begin to ease (restrictions) when risk groups have been vaccinated,” Bukholm told the newspaper.

That means at least one dose being given to everyone over the age of 45, a stage which will have been reached during May, VG writes.

“It will gradually be possible to open the borders and have normal tourist traffic. And everything related to social meetings. That could happen at the end of May, although I cannot be completely sure about it,” Bukholm said.

Norway’s vaccination programme is currently progressing relatively slowly, although the country has distributed roughly the same number of vaccines per hundred inhabitants as most EU countries, according to data from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC).

The Nordic country is a participant in the EU’s procurement scheme for Covid-19 vaccines.

UPDATE: Norway agrees to regional Covid-19 vaccine prioritisation in change of strategy

“We will get a lot of supplies in May and June. It is an almost exponential increase. From having vaccinated a relatively small proportion, we’ll have vaccinated almost everyone, in the space of two months,” Bukholm said, adding that it “looks like (vaccine suppliers) Pfizer and AstraZeneca are delivering as planned”.

The NIPH is currently working with the Norwegian Directorate of Health on a plan for reopening, which is expected to be handed to the government later this month.

Optimism about a timescale for reopening should be tempered by the possibilities of potential delays related to various factors, Bukholm also noted.

“There are many factors we don’t have control of: we don’t know the effect of virus variants going forward, for example. If we relax too early and allow the epidemic to run wild, we’ll get a lot of sick people in the group down to 45 years,” he said.

Three scenarios: When will life return to normal in Norway?

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COVID-19

Public Health Agency recommends two Covid doses next year for elderly

Sweden's Public Health Agency is recommending that those above the age of 80 should receive two doses of a Covid-19 vaccine a year, once in the spring and once in the autumn, as it shifts towards a longer-term strategy for the virus.

Published: 23 December 2022 10:53 CET
Public Health Agency recommends two Covid doses next year for elderly

In a new recommendation, the agency said that those living in elderly care centres, and those above the age of 80 should from March 1st receive two vaccinations a year, with a six month gap between doses. 

“Elderly people develop a somewhat worse immune defence after vaccination and immunity wanes faster than among young and healthy people,” the agency said. “That means that elderly people have a greater need of booster doses than younger ones. The Swedish Public Health Agency considers, based on the current knowledge, that it will be important even going into the future to have booster doses for the elderly and people in risk groups.” 

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People between the ages of 65 and 79 years old and young people with risk factors, such as obesity, diabetes, poor kidney function or high blood pressure, are recommended to take one additional dose per year.

The new vaccination recommendation, which will start to apply from March 1st next year, is only for 2023, Johanna Rubin, the investigator in the agency’s vaccination programme unit, explained. 

She said too much was still unclear about how long protection from vaccination lasted to institute a permanent programme.

“This recommendation applies to 2023. There is not really an abundance of data on how long protection lasts after a booster dose, of course, but this is what we can say for now,” she told the TT newswire. 

It was likely, however, that elderly people would end up being given an annual dose to protect them from any new variants, as has long been the case with influenza.

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