AP PHOTOS: Vaccine teams do house calls for Rome's homebound

ROME -- The doctor and nurse manage just 12 shots a day — six in the morning, six in the afternoon — visiting Rome’s home-bound elderly to administer COVID-19 vaccines and, with them, the hope that Italy’s most fragile might soon emerge from the pandemic. It's a time-consuming but crucial part of the vaccination campaign in Italy, which has the world’s second-oldest population and tends to care for its aged at home rather than in institutional facilities. In the Lazio region around Rome, some 30,000 people over age 75 and with conditions that made it impossible for them to get to vaccination centers requested a house call. On Tuesday, a dozen of them got their second dose of Pfizer-BioNTech thanks to Dr. Elisa Riccitelli and nurse Luigi Lauri. To make sure they hit all their appointments on time — one vial of Pfizer for the morning six, one vial for the afternoon — the local public health center struck a deal with Uber so its visiting vaccination teams could have a dedicated car and driver. The 500 free rides from Uber cut down on time spent finding parking spots in Rome’s notoriously congested streets.