Photo/Illutration Elderly people wait to receive a COVID-19 vaccine shot in Kita-Kyushu, Fukuoka Prefecture, on April 12. (Jun Kaneko)

The director of a surgical clinic in Shingu, Fukuoka Prefecture, is uneasy about dispatching his staff to help with COVID-19 vaccinations.

Doctors and nurses from Hayashi Hara's clinic are scheduled to work at a mass vaccination site in May, but as of April 21, none had received a shot themselves.

“I am worried about the risk that they may contract the virus at the site or infect elderly people who come to receive a vaccine there,” Hara said.

About 4.8 million health care workers nationwide went to the head of the line to receive a COVID-19 vaccine in February.

But only 17 percent have completed the immunization process because there are too little supplies of vaccines and too many logistical challenges.

The process has further frustrated those who are on the front lines of the fight against the novel coronavirus pandemic.

Moreover, it has pitted medical professionals against a virus-vulnerable population, elderly people, over how to distribute the limited vaccines.

Hara's clinic has set up a tent outside to conduct a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test on people who are suspected of having contracted the virus.

“The ‘fourth wave’ of the pandemic is approaching Fukuoka Prefecture, too," Hara said. "Our staff are working every day facing an infection risk.”

The clinic was initially told that it would receive vaccines for the staff in late April. But the fridge that is supposed to store the vaccines temporarily has remained empty.

Hara has tried calling the call center that the Fukuoka prefectural government set up to take questions from health care organizations about the vaccine.

“But the line is busy all the time,” he said.

“As long as there is no prospect that health care workers are immunized, we cannot prepare to immunize elderly people,” Hara said, urging the prefectural government to “provide more information to mitigate the concerns and confusion of medical workers at work.”

Hoping to bolster the health care system, the central government started immunizing medical workers who are likely to treat COVID-19 patients in February.

But the supply of vaccines did not keep up with the schedule. Then came April, when the central government promised to start immunizing the next priority group, elderly people.

Not knowing what to do, prefectural officials flooded the health ministry with questions.

“Many of them asked if they can use the vaccines intended for the elderly for health care workers,” a ministry official said.

In response, the ministry on April 2 notified prefectural governments that, “Yes, you can.”

In the city of Fukuoka, vaccinating the elderly started at 140 health care organizations on April 15.

But the city government, after discussions with a local doctors’ organization, decided to divert the doses that were supposed to immunize the elderly for medical workers instead to lower the risk of the virus spreading at vaccination sites. 

Fukuoka Mayor Soichiro Takashima expressed his displeasure about the situation at a news conference on April 20.

“It is absurd that health care workers who give vaccine shots are not immunized in the first place,” he said.

Kita-Kyushu officials made the same decision. From April 19, the city has given the vaccines delivered for the elderly to 1,800 or so doctors and other medical workers who are in charge of the city’s mass vaccination program.

“To carry out the vaccinations safely and securely, doctors and nurses need to have received at least the first shot of the vaccines,” a city official said.

According to data collected by the central government, out of about 4.8 million health care workers, 800,500 people, or 17 percent, had received two shots of the vaccine as of April 20.

(This article was written by Takero Yamazaki and Hayato Jinno.)

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