[News] Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Latvia and Slovakia will receive extra vaccines from the EU to accelerate immunization

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19 countries of the bloc agreed to give these five countries a fraction of the proportional part that would have corresponded to them of 10 million doses of Pfizer.

Five European countries, Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Latvia and Slovakia, will obtain a higher proportion of the 10 million vaccines that the European Union will receive in advance from Pfizer to compensate for the delays they have faced in their vaccination campaigns after having opted 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 would have had to receive exactly 1,057,166 of these 10 million that Pfizer has advanced -because its po[CENSORED]tion represents around 10% of the European po[CENSORED]tion-, but has chosen to give up a third so that Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Latvia and Slovakia can accelerate their vaccination campaigns and not be left behind due to not having enough doses of AstraZeneca.

In this way, Spain will receive 740,016 doses of the 10 million that Pfizer has advanced, according to a document that sets out the exact amounts that each of the Twenty-seven will receive and to which Efe had access.

Thanks to the generosity of Spain and eighteen other countries, Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Latvia and Slovakia, will receive, in addition to their proportional share by po[CENSORED]tion of the total 10 million, an additional 2.85 million that will only have to be distributed among them .

The joint purchase of vaccines carried out by the European Commission implies that each country has access to these drugs proportional to its po[CENSORED]tion, but States could choose to prioritize certain vaccines before knowing how their distribution was going to develop.

Bulgaria, for example, opted for AstraZeneca and not for Pfizer-BioNTech because its logistics were easier and it has had to suffer and face the cuts and delays in the deliveries of the former.

The Portuguese Presidency of the Council, which drew up the distribution proposal, explained in a statement that it is an "extraordinary" solution that allows "a significant expression of solidarity through the distribution of almost three million vaccines to the Member States. who need it most. "

"I welcome the agreement reached today on the solidarity distribution of vaccines among the EU Member States, which allows at least 45% of the po[CENSORED]tion of each of them to be vaccinated by the end of June. Now we must accelerate vaccination and start a just, ecological and digital recovery, "tweeted Portuguese Prime Minister Antònio Costa.

Austria had been one of the countries that had initially advocated for such solidarity, but distanced itself from the final agreement when it became clear that it was not one of the countries that most needed extra vaccines.