If all goes according to plan, a first delivery of Pfizer/BionTech vaccines will arrive in Luxembourg this Saturday and mass vaccination will start on Monday.
As provided for in the government’s vaccination strategy, medical and care staff will be the first to be vaccinated followed by the elderly.
As of Monday 28 and Tuesday 29 December, 200 employees per hospital group will be able to be vaccinated in Luxembourg’s first vaccination centre, Hall Victor Hugo, which has already been operational for several days. They will be injected with a dose of the Biontech/Pfizer vaccine, which is now officially called Cominarty. In the meantime, the hospital centres will be able to start vaccinating their staff themselves.
Since Tuesday morning, the health staff of the CHL have been able to register for vaccinations in the Victor Hugo centre. According to Grégory Gaudillot, head of the pharmacy service at the Centre Hospitalier de Luxembourg (CHL), the timing is tight but there is indeed a demand which is still high and so the CHL decided to start the appointment booking process on Tuesday. Gaudillot stated that one third of all available places had already been booked on the first morning and the CHL is confident that it will fill all of its available spots.
The CHL estimates that the number of volunteers for the vaccination will increase as soon as the vaccine can be injected at the hospital. This should be the case around 12 January. A phased vaccination plan will then begin.
Gaudillot explained that this plan should allow the staff who are most at risk to be vaccinated first. After that, the CHL will divide staff across three groups that will allow them to measure their individual risk precisely. Staff members in direct contact with Covid-19 patients will be given priority, followed by those with less regular contact, and then all of the remaining staff.
The CHL will initially have 975 doses at its disposal. To this end, it has set up its own vaccination room where nearly 56 people can be injected daily.
The government recommends residents to get vaccinated when they receive their invitation. For the Federation of Luxembourg Hospitals (FHL), the vaccine is an important part of the solution.
At the moment, however, there is no reason to fear a vaccination obligation in Luxembourg, explains lawyer Guy Castegnaro, who specialises in labour rights. It is, in principle, not possible, according to Castegnaro. Vaccination or forcing a vaccination is an invasion of privacy but also an attack on physical integrity. Privacy and physical integrity are protected by law.
For vaccination to become a general obligation in Luxembourg, a new law would have to be drawn up. This would not be an easy process since the European Convention on Human Rights must be respected.
