Health ministry assessed correctness of management of COVID vaccines

Chisinau, Dec. 24 / MOLDPRES /- The Ministry of Health has assessed the correctness of the management and administration of COVID-19 vaccines in the context of the audit report submitted by the Court of Auditors.

During the performance audit carried out by the Court of Accounts, over 527 thousand records were evaluated in the information system for recording vaccinations against COVID-19. Of these, for 520.2 thousand (98.7%) no deviation was identified, and for 6 804 cases (constituting 1.3%), registered in the period May-August this year, the audit reported vaccine registrations with an expired date on the date of registration in the system.

In order to assess the correctness of the administration of vaccines, the Ministry of Health has set up a commission of inquiry, which has so far analyzed 1,967 cases of those reported with deviations from the registration, carrying out visits to 12 medical institutions in the country. The commission of inquiry included representatives of the Ministry of Health, specialists in family medicine, public health and who administer the information system for immunization records.

The assessment was based on an examination of the processes and evidence documentation on vaccine management and administration, as well as tax invoices for batches received by institutions, vaccination records on paper, and contrasting data included in the information system. As a result, it was established that, for the most part, the deviations found were caused by admitting errors in entering data into the electronic immunization record system. Thus, when registering the administered vaccine, the type of vaccine is chosen, as well as the series, from a predefined list from the drop-down menu, where all the series received in the country are indicated, both those available and those already exhausted. These imperfections of the system allowed the data to be entered, the wrong choice of vaccine series.

The MS notes that the probability of errors in entering the data, which were identified for 1.3% of the records recorded, was influenced by the excessive workload, the high degree of physical and moral exhaustion of the medical workers responsible for carrying out the immunization campaign, carried out at an accelerated pace in the summer of 2021, with the conduct of vaccination marathons, in parallel with the provision of all other duties, on a background of staff crisis.