Vaccine news

Czechia has refused to buy one million Covid-19 vaccines from the United Arab Emirates - and will receive extra doses from the EU.

The EU states have approved that they will give the Czech Republic extra 100,000 doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine. PM Andrej Babiš (ANO) announced on Twitter they should arrive next week.

According to the IHNED.cz server, Pfizer has accelerated vaccine production in recent days, so it will deliver more doses to the EU than originally promised. The EU countries have agreed that part of these additional deliveries will not be distributed evenly according to population. It will instead be given to states that requested it due to an unfavourable epidemic situation. Apart from the Czech Republic, the same supply will also go to Slovakia and Austria.

The Ministry of Health has recently refused to buy one million AstraZeneca vaccines offered by the United Arab Emirates. The Minister of Foreign Affairs Tomáš Petříček (ČSSD) said that the vaccines were made in India and could have arrived in two months at the latest - but were a bit pricier.

According to the Minister of Health Jan Blatný (for ANO), the reason for the refusal was that these vaccines were not authorized for use in the European Union. While explaining the issue to the Chamber of Deputies, Blatný also said that there is no reason to go looking for unregistered vaccines as insurance companies would not be able to pay for their use.

The intention to get the Russian Sputnik V vaccine, which does not have EU certification, was recently announced by President Miloš Zeman and Prime Minister Babiš. According to Blatný, three million doses of registered vaccines are due to arrive during March and April. At the beginning of April, people over the age of 65 could register to get their jabs. And if enough vaccines were available, GPs could vaccinate without registrations.