The first consignments of COVID-19 vaccines will arrive in Moldova in the middle of February. These are the about 25,000 doses of Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine (Comirnaty) and 264,000 doses produced by Oxford/AstraZeneca. The Ministry of Health, Labor and Social Protection received confirmation of the delivery of the vaccines by the COVAX platform, IPN reports.

In a press release, the Ministry noted that Moldova will receive doses for vaccinating 20% of the population through the agency of COVAX gratis. The vaccine produced by Pfizer/BioNTech (Comirnaty) will be stored at the National Public Health Agency, which will ensure the necessary storage conditions, at temperatures of -60°C… -90°C. Later, the vaccines will be distributed to vaccination units.

The vaccine manufactured by Oxford/AstraZeneca will be delivered to Moldova in tranches, starting with the end of February. This vaccine must be kept at temperatures of +2°C…+8°C.

COVAX is one of three pillars of the Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator (Diagnostics, Treatments and Vaccines), which was launched in April by the World Health Organization, the European Commission and France in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

COVAX received applications to supply COVID-19 vaccines from 72 countries. Eighteen countries were selected at the first stage, including Moldova.

After Moldova gets free COVID-19 vaccines from COVAX, it will purchase more shorts from this platform at a preferential price.

Since the pandemic started, Moldova has got about 160,000 infections with COVID-19.