MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 10th February, 2021) Bulgaria plans to procure over 3 million additional doses of the coronavirus vaccines by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna to make up for a possible shortage of supplies of the one by AstraZeneca, Bulgarian Health Minister Kostadin Angelov said on Wednesday.
In recent weeks, Pfizer/BioNTech and AstraZeneca delayed the supplies of contracted amounts of vaccines to the European Union due to production irregularities.
"According to the data available at the EU level, as well as due to the possible decrease in supplies of the vaccine by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca, we suggest ordering additional doses, which will be proportionally distributed depending on the population of our country, in the amount of 2,897,694 doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine and 460,000 doses of the Moderna vaccine," Angelov said, as quoted by the Bulgarian National Television.
The backup procurement is needed to ensure that every Bulgarian citizen has enough variety of vaccines to choose from, according to the minister.
As for other EU member states, Bulgaria launched its COVID-19 vaccination campaign on December 27. The Bulgarian government used the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine until January 13� and then included the Moderna vaccine afterward.
As of Wednesday, Bulgaria vaccinated over 62,000 people of its roughly 7-million population. The country's COVID-19 toll amounts to over 226,000 cases, including 9,482 deaths and more than 194,500 recoveries.
