Denmark Plans to Complete Vaccinations by June 27

If individual European countries are managing their own vaccination programs, will they also be determining their travel policies?

There was some variation last year, and now there's a new variable in the mix (extent of vaccination coverage), so I assume there will be some differences.

Thanks for this information. I haven’t heard much about other European countries and the various vaccination programs. Please don’t jump on me, posters, I’m just asking for information.

Acraven, are you aware of any other European countries?

We have info from the UK (threads on this website), but I haven't seen detailed articles about other countries. I imagine there is some information being published locally, but perhaps not in English so we don't get links here.

This is the website (originally found by Agnes, I think) I've been using to monitor the speed of vaccination rollout in each country. You can add other countries to the bar chart, or delete some, via the check boxes on the left. Of course, where countries are now doesn't tell us a great deal about the position they'll be in by May-June-July-August-September. Denmark looks as if it will pull ahead as a result of buying freezers, special syringes, and a lot of doses of vaccine from Pfizer and Moderna, which are now fulfilling their delivery commitments. Other countries counted more on cheaper, easier-to-store vaccines which aren't being delivered as fast.

https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&time=latest&country=ALB~AND~AUT~BLR~BEL~BIH~BGR~HRV~CYP~CZE~DNK~EST~FIN~FRA~DEU~GRC~HUN~ISL~IRL~ITA~OWIDKOS~LVA~LIE~LTU~LUX~MLT~MDA~MCO~MNE~NLD~MKD~NOR~POL~PRT~ROU~RUS~SMR~SRB~SVK~SVN~ESP~SWE~CHE~UKR~GBR~VAT~USA~CAN&region=World&vaccinationsMetric=true&interval=total&perCapita=true&smoothing=0&pickerMetric=totalvaccinationsperhundred&pickerSort=desc

Thanks, Acraven, I appreciate this information. I suppose I need to not be so anxious. I know the future is unpredictable.

Sweden's plan is to have everyone vaccinated by the summer, so probably a similar time scale as Denmark. What the reality will be is another question…

If all goes well, I hope to be on Rick’s Scandinavia tour late August-September. This includes Sweden, Denmark and Norway. My dream is to visit the land of my heritage- Sweden.

PBS Newshour:
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/supply-shortages-and-delays-leave-europes-vaccination-campaign-in-crisis

Feb 23 Europe’s vaccination rollout is in crisis with manufacturing
delays causing supply shortages and thousands of appointments
cancelled indefinitely. The European Union wants to see 70 percent of
its population inoculated by the fall. But frustration is growing
amongst its citizens amid the realization those targets could be out
of reach. Special Correspondent Lucy Hough reports.

That news segment was apparently recorded before today's announcement that AstraZeneca's Quarter 2 deliveries to the EU will amount to under 90 million doses rather than the expected 180 million--though the company is obviously trying to do better than that.

The shortfall will probably not affect Denmark significantly, because it placed its vaccine bets primarily on Pfizer and Moderna, whose manufacturing delays seem to be mostly in the past.

https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-health-coronavirus-eu-astrazeneca-exc-idUSKBN2AN22Y

The EU's vaccine rollout is woefully poor. The chart on this link shows the recent rates: https://www.politico.eu/article/coronavirus-vaccination-europe-by-the-numbers/

Much of the slow rollout was due to the sclerotic bureaucracy of the EU, their failure to approve and secure doses in time and now the scaremongering by the likes of Angela Merkel and Emmanual Macron when they falsely claimed that the Oxford/Astrazeneca vaccine was not effective in the over 65's (it's actually been proven to be more effective overall than the Pfizer vaccine), this scaremongering has backfired spectacularly because many citizens of France and Germany are refusing to have the O/A jab and this is already slowing what was already a lacklustre mass vaccination.

Many EU countries have not stated what their plans for easing restrictions or opening up their country to visitors however Germany yesterday announced they were in the grips of a third wave and would not be relaxing their current border restrictions.

Greece has decided to break from EU guidelines and is considering allowing British tourists from May if they can prove that they have been vaccinated.

Spain has previously stated that the country will not be open to tourists until 70% of the population is vaccinated which at the current rate would be well past the crucial summer tourist season however the tourist minister has contradicted this by claiming that the country would be open from April onwards. There has not been any confirmation about proof of vaccination but Spain has been at the forefront of proposing vaccine passports so I suspect they, like Greece, will require proof of vaccination.

Hungary has decided to break from the EU Commission's orders and has purchased quantities of the Russian Sputnik vaccine and I suspect as time goes on we will begin to see other countries breaking ranks and purchasing their own vaccines.

The UK is expected to have a significant surplus however the government has stated that it will offer this to poorer countries when it is available.

That's good news, but last we checked in with kids in Copenhagen, they hadn't heard when U.S. Embassy staff could expect theirs.

That date, the day where it's expected that the last Dane will get the 2nd injection, have recently been postponed from June 27 to July 18 due to vaccine delivery delays. Fingers crossed that the vaccination programme won't be delayed any more.

In positive news, the Danish government have announced plans to lift some of the very strict travel recommendations (for Danes) in April and launch a COVID-vaccination passport in May. While it's still too early to say when travelling will return to normal, especially intercontinental travel might have to wait for a while, it can at least give us some hope for the future. Denmark is also slowly reopening after a couple of months of lockdown, and the already quite large testing capacity is being expanded significantly to help keep new infections down as the country opens up. It is still expected to result in a lot of new cases over the next couple of months, which is not as good news.