Today in Norway: A roundup of the latest news on Friday

Bergen may throw away thousands of Moderna Covid-19 vaccines 

Bergen municipality has said that it may be forced to throw out around 10,000 Moderna doses that have been thawed from storage at the end of September. 

The municipality has said that the reason why it is struggling to use up the Moderna doses before their expiration is that people believe they experience more severe side effects with Moderna. 

“We have been trying to argue objectively that Moderna is at least as good a vaccine as Pfizer, but there are some who have decided in advance,” Kjell Haug, a doctor with Bergen municipality, told newspaper Bergens Tidende. 

Haug added the municipality was doing everything within its power to ensure that the unused vaccines didn’t end up in the bin. 

Tasers permanently introduced for use by the Norwegian police 

The government has decided that police in Norway will be equipped with tasers. 

Norway’s emergency response police have been equipped with stun guns for daily service since 2019, and four police districts have used tasers as part of a pilot project. 

In that time, the police used tasers on 90 people. The emergency response police were behind 11 of the uses. 

The police have said that the introduction of tasers will lead to less lethal force being used. 

“It is a great tool for us in those situations where it is too dangerous for us to get close to the perpetrator, and where we would prefer not to shoot the person, but must also stop them,” an unnamed police officer who works for the emergency response unit told public broadcaster NRK.

New scooter rules to come into place 

Oslo’s new electric scooter rules, including cutting the number of scooters by as much as 66 percent, come into place Friday but could also scrapped on the same day. 

The reason for this is that a ruling from Oslo District Court is expected on Friday after electric scooter companies Voi, Tier, and Ryde took to court to try and block the new rules from coming into place. 

The companies are have argued the new rules will decimate the market shares the various rental providers have fought for. 

If the companies get their way, then the rules will be repealed on the same day they are introduced. 

1,629 new cases of Covid infection 

On Thursday, 1,629 cases of Covid-19 infection were registered in Norway. This is 214 cases, more than the average for the previous seven days. 

In Oslo, 465 new infections were recorded, 61 less than the day before. 

Total number of Covid-19 in Norway. Source: Norwegian Institute of Public Health