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EU countries have agreed on how 10 million early doses of vaccines will be distributed among member states. Sweden will receive approximately 165,000 additional doses.
Covid-19 vaccination in German Munich. Stock photo.
Vaccine doses should be distributed proportionally according to the population. So also in this case, but with some differences: five countries have received an extra large share.
These are the countries that are considered unfairly affected by Astra Zeneca’s delivery problems during the spring. Therefore, Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Latvia and Slovakia receive a slightly higher proportion of vaccine doses.
According to the Reuters news agency, the EU has also approached India with a request to buy 10 million doses of Astra Zeneca vaccines manufactured by the Serum Institute of India (SII). The information comes from an Indian government source, citing a letter sent two weeks ago.
IBS is the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer, based in Pune, western India.
The EU ambassador wrote a letter saying “please give us permission,” the government source told Reuters.
In the 27 EU countries, a total of almost 70 million doses of vaccines have been injected, more than double the number at the end of last month.
However, the rate of increase across Europe is still insufficient, according to the UN World Health Organization, WHO.
“The distribution of these vaccines is unacceptably slow. We must speed up the process by speeding up production, lowering administrative barriers and using every dose of vaccine that we have in stock at the moment,” said WHO Europe Chief for Europe Hans Kluge. , in a statement on Holy Thursday.
WHO is concerned that the spread of the infection across Europe is increasing dramatically again, last week to a total of 1.6 million new cases of covid-19 in the 53 countries that the WHO includes in its European statistics.
Last week, several countries were forced to tighten their lockdown measures.
Others, in turn, have run into legal hurdles.
In Belgium, a court ruled Wednesday that strict measures now in place for several months, including closed restaurants, late-night curfews and homework demands, are not based on “sufficient legal grounds.” Therefore, the government is urged to enforce the necessary legislation within a month, unless all measures are declared invalid.
Leaders of the country’s largest bar association have previously complained that the Belgian government has not had enough in its way of deciding on the crown’s measures.
“In a democratic state governed by the rule of law, these temporary restrictions must be decided by Parliament or at least on the basis of clear rules established in it … and not only in the corridors of the Ministry of the Interior, it does not matter how wise and knowledgeable people are, ”the lawyers recently wrote in an open letter of protest.
The spread of infection in the EU
The spread of covid-19 in the EU is currently worst in the eastern parts. However, Portugal, which was hit the hardest by all at the end of January, is now the country with the least spread of the infection in the EU.
This is the situation, calculated according to the number of new cases per 100,000 inhabitants in the last two weeks:
More than 1000 cases: Estonia (1364), Hungary (1197) and the Czech Republic (1069).
More than 500 cases: Poland (923), Bulgaria (722), France (704), Sweden (687), Slovenia (591), Cyprus (561), Netherlands (554), Belgium (547) and Italy (518) .
More than 200 cases: Austria (481), Luxembourg (460), Croatia (403), Romania (402), Latvia (381), Malta (375), Slovakia (369), Lithuania (312), Greece (307) and Germany. (248).
More than 100 cases: Finland (165), Spain (160), Ireland (157) and Denmark (131).
Under 100: Portugal (60).
Currently, the numbers are increasing in all but eight countries: Estonia, Czech Republic, Cyprus, Malta, Slovakia, Finland, Denmark and Portugal.
The figures are increasing the most in Croatia (46 percent compared to last week), Poland (29 percent) and Germany (27 percent).
Source: ECDC