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The number of Covid 19 vaccinations in Austria will have surpassed one million over the weekend, the Health Ministry reported in a release on Saturday. “Yesterday we reached a daily record of almost 50,000 vaccinations, and meanwhile one million vaccinations have already been carried out,” the department said. The number of daily vaccinations is consistently increasing as planned, it added.
The number of 500,000 Corona vaccinations was exceeded in Austria three weeks ago. The delivery would now also increase sharply: In March, there will be a total of more than 1.1 million doses, in the 2nd quarter about 6.9 million doses and in the 3rd quarter probably more than twelve million doses. In total, more than 20 million vaccine doses would have arrived in Austria by the 3rd quarter included, several times more than needed, the department reported.
It was crucial to consistently implement the vaccination plan with comprehensive prioritization of groups at increased risk, which was made more feasible by the dropping of the age barrier for AstraZeneca’s vaccine, it said. For this purpose, a decree to the states was announced for Monday to fully implement this prioritization of the elderly and high-risk groups consistently in the vaccination schedule.
Regarding the ongoing debate on vaccine distribution within the EU and the quantities ordered by Austria, the Ministry of Health ordered 24 million doses of vaccine for Austria last July, a quantity for almost three vaccinations for each Austrian. The agreement that all EU member states should receive the same amount of vaccine per inhabitant was an important step at that time, he said. All EU member states must be supplied at the same time with the same quantities of vaccine, relative to the number of the population. An EU summit on the issue would be welcomed, he said.
“At the time the contract was drawn up with the six manufacturers at the time, there was no clear picture on the question of approval, the exact timing of approval and the earliest possible delivery dates. According to the state of knowledge at the time, AstraZeneca and Moderna were considered the most promising candidates, which is why the experts at the Ministry of Health, like many other EU member states, gave priority to fully utilizing this quota, and almost the same for Biontech/Pfizer – all while adhering to the 200 million euro budget for the vaccination campaign anchored at the time by the National Council and the Council of Ministers,” the ministry said in its release, summarizing the initial situation.
Austria had currently ordered around 31 million vaccine doses. Consequently, the full immunization for each person living in Austria is ensured by a factor of 2.85. This also fulfills the federal government’s requirement that everyone in Austria can be vaccinated. Moreover, these delivery quantities had been anchored in several parliamentary speeches.
- source: k.at/picture:pixabay.com
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