The City of Helsinki Social Services and Health Care Division will be sending a text message to all Helsinki residents aged 55–64 who are at risk of severe COVID-19 symptoms due to an illness or other medical condition.
A text message will be sent to all those born between 1957-66 who are customers of the social and health care services for health-related reasons. The text messages will be sent tomorrow on Tuesday.
The text message indicates that the recipient is, according to the information held by the Social Services and Health Care Division, scheduled for vaccination and should therefore read the appointment booking instructions at www.hel.fi/sote/koronarokotus-en. Recipients are also requested to make sure that they are scheduled for vaccination. If a person receives a text message but does not consider themselves to belong to a risk group, they do not need to do anything. They can wait for the vaccination turn of their age group later this year. The sender information of the text message will read HKI SOTE.
The text message is sent in Finnish or Swedish, based on the native language of each recipient. Those whose native language is not Finnish or Swedish will receive the message in Finnish, Swedish and English.
The text message will be sent to slightly less then 6,000 people. However, the message will not reach all those scheduled for vaccination due to an illness as some are customers of occupational or specialised health care services. Furthermore, a telephone number is not registered for all persons who are customers of social and health care services for health-related reasons. For this reason, information on coronavirus vaccinations is also published in newspapers. To find out more about whether or not you belong to an at-risk group due to an illness, visit www.hel.fi/sote/koronarokotus-en.
The text message recipients have been picked based on the Health Benefit Analysis, which is a digital tool. The Analysis leverages data available in the patient information system as well as reasoning based on scientific evidence. The Health Benefit Analysis is used to assess the health of the population by dividing and filtering groups of people based on medical histories. The Health Benefit Analysis project is one of City of Helsinki’s key digital projects.