Sofia, Bulgaria: The Ministry of Health of Bulgaria, on May 19, 2022, notified that it has written down to European Commission asking the agency to provide doses of the COVID vaccines on the basis of population.
The statement of the health ministry cited that the nations must be able to purchase the amount of COVID vaccine doses that a country requires.
“Bulgaria relies on an open dialogue with the EC and the manufacturers of pandemic vaccines to negotiate quantities tailored to the needs of EU member states and our country in particular. There is a need for understanding, both on the part of the company and the EC, on the flexibility that vaccine contracts should have”, the ministry further adds.
The health ministry further asserted that the European Commission signed an agreement with Pfizer-BioNTech with the motive to deal with the contagious COVID-19 pandemic and following the shortage of vaccines. Under this contract, the Commission will be buying COVID-19 vaccines for the period 2022-2023 so that there is an equal distribution of the vaccines among the European states.
The ministry further adds, “Subsequently, the quantities approved for Bulgaria and the other Member States turned out to be in surplus, which is why since mid-2021, the country has been actively and consistently, in dialogue with the European Commission and other nations, looking for solutions to reduce vaccines. The primary reason is that member states are obliged to buy quantities of the COVID-19 vaccines that they do not need“.
According to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control’s online vaccine tracker, Bulgaria contains the lowest COVID-19 vaccination rate in the European Union-European Economic Area.
Nearly 29.7% of the total targeted eligible population is fully vaccinated against the virus, whereas around 10.9% of the Bulgarian citizens are the ones who are fully vaccinated and have also taken their third dose (booster shots) of the COVID-19 vaccines.
