Online booking for COVID-19 vaccination opens in Finnish capital area

HELSINKI, Jan. 26 (Xinhua) -- An online booking system for vaccination against COVID-19 opened here Tuesday in the Finnish capital and its surrounding province of Uusimaa, according to the hospital district of Helsinki and Uusimaa (HUS).

The booking system is a preparation for mass vaccination in the area and gives priority to the elderly. Appointments can be made online or by phone, but eligibility rules vary by municipality.

Mass vaccination will start later this week first in Espoo and Vantaa, two cities in the area. For residents of Helsinki aged 85 and over as well as carers living with them, vaccinations will begin next week. In Helsinki, over 2,000 vaccine doses will be available for the elderly next week, according to Finnish national broadcaster Yle.

Centers for mass vaccinations are gradually opening in Finland. As of Tuesday, 105,000 Finns, mainly seniors in nursing homes and medical staff, had been vaccinated against COVID-19, the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL) said.

Mass vaccinations in Finland are to rely on the AstraZeneca vaccine. However, the company said last week it cannot deliver to the EU the amounts that it had earlier announced.

Finnish Minister of Family Affairs and Social Services Krista Kiuru published Tuesday a letter she had sent to Pascal Soriot, CEO of AstraZeneca, saying "It is unacceptable that the deliveries to the EU will be delayed while some other countries are receiving ample amounts of vaccine."

Kiuru noted that the EU has made "significant investment through public funding" and that "this investment must be turned into concrete results."

Taneli Puumalainen, head of Vaccination Program Unit at THL, said Tuesday that next week Finland would get 50,000 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. Puumalainen said Finland would need five to seven million doses by the summer.

Vaccinations are free of charge to all residents in Finland, but not compulsory.

As of Tuesday, Finland has confirmed a total of 43,120 cases of COVID-19 infection, of which 348 are new cases in the past 24 hours. The death toll stood at 655, according to THL.

As the world is struggling to contain the pandemic, vaccination is underway in some countries with the already-authorized coronavirus vaccines.

Meanwhile, 236 candidate vaccines are still being developed worldwide -- 63 of them in clinical trials -- in countries including Germany, China, Russia, Britain and the United States, according to information released by the World Health Organization on Jan. 26.