PM: Bulgaria to receive more than 1.25M doses of BioNTech-Pfizer vaccine in next 3 months
Bulgaria will receive a further more than 1.25 million doses of the BioNTech-Pfizer vaccine against Covid-19 from the rest of the European Union in the next three months, Prime Minister Boiko Borissov said in a post on Facebook on April 2.
This has become possible after 19 EU countries agreed to help Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Latvia and Slovakia through a solidarity mechanism, Borissov said.
The decision was confirmed on April 1 by COREPER, the Committee of Permanent Representatives in the EU, made up of the heads or deputy heads of mission of the EU member states in Brussels.
The decision will lead to additional quantities being distributed to countries experiencing difficulties because of AstraZeneca not complying with its agreements with the EU, Borissov said.
The goal is for all EU countries to be as close as possible to vaccinating 50 per cent of their citizens by the end of June 2021.
Borissov thanked the European Commission and its President Ursula von der Leyen, including for the vaccines that were additionally granted to Bulgaria, as well as for the efforts of the Portuguese Presidency of the Council of the EU to achieve the result of the additional 1.25 million BioNTech-Pfizer doses.
Separately, Pirogov emergency hospital head Assen Baltov told Bulgarian National Television on April 2 that the additional BioNTech-Pfizer doses would result in Bulgaria’s national vaccination plan being “100 per cent fulfilled and even overfulfilled”.
It would mean that more than 70 per cent of Bulgaria’s population would be vaccinated by the end of September, Baltov said.
“When the shipment will arrive will become clear next week. With one million by the end of April, then 1.5 million by May and two million already vaccinated by the end of June, we will have accumulated collective immunity,” he said.
“The best vaccine is the one that is administered, there is no way that it can be said that the AstraZeneca is less suitable than the RNA vaccines,” Baltov said.
(Photo: EC Audiovisual Service)
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