Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Latvia and Slovakia will receive a higher share of the 10 million vaccines that the European Union will receive in advance from Pfizer to make up for the delays they have suffered in their vaccination campaigns after opting for the AstraZeneca vaccine , which has not met the expected delivery schedule.
Nineteen Member States, including Spain, agreed to give these five countries a fraction of their proportional share of these 10 million vaccines, while Austria, the Czech Republic and Slovenia decided not to share their allocation.
This means that, for example, Spain should have received exactly 1,057,166 of these 10 million that Pfizer has advanced – because its population represents about 10% of the European population – but has chosen to give up a third, so Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia , Latvia and Slovakia can speed up their vaccination campaigns and not be left behind because they don’t have enough doses of AstraZeneca.
In this way, Spain will receive 740,016 doses out of the 10 million advanced by Pfizer, according to a document outlining the exact amounts each of the twenty-seven will receive and to which Efe had access.
Thanks to the generosity of Spain and 18 other countries, Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Latvia and Slovakia, in addition to their proportional share in the total population of the total of 10 million, will receive a further 2.85 million that only about them.
The joint procurement of vaccines by the European Commission means that each country has access to these drugs in proportion to its population, but states could choose to prioritize certain vaccines before knowing how their distribution would develop.
Bulgaria, for example, chose AstraZeneca and not Pfizer-BioNTech because logistics were simpler and faced cutbacks and delays in the former’s deliveries.
The Portuguese Presidency of the Council, which drafted the distribution proposal, explained in a statement that it is an “extraordinary” solution that “allows a significant expression of solidarity through the distribution of nearly three million vaccines to the Member States in need of it. most. “
“I welcome the agreement reached today on the solidarity distribution of vaccines between the EU Member States, which will allow at least 45% of the population of each of them to be vaccinated by the end of June. Now we need to speed up vaccination and ensure a fair, ecological and digital recovery, ”tweeted Portuguese Prime Minister Antònio Costa.
Austria was one of the countries that had initially advocated such solidarity, but backed away from the final agreement when it became clear that it was not one of the countries most in need of additional vaccines.