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Romania received 35 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine out of approximately 80 million ordered, Health Minister Alexandru Rafila said in a statement on Saturday.
"Of the 35 million supplied, about 10 million have been destroyed or are about to be destroyed, because they expired. There are still two million doses at health facilities, which are within their assigned shelf-life, and this amount will be replenished with another 1.2 million doses of the vaccine in the latest formulation - you are well aware that the vaccine is periodically updated. This is the amount of shots that had been paid for in advance as early as 2021, and this way the contract with one of the manufacturers will be settled. More than 20 million doses were used, with the specification that, at least in the past, when the vaccine came in multi-dose vials, only a part of the doses were administered and some were not, because of the limited shelf-life after the vial's opening," Rafila said, Agerpres informs.
According to the minister, the costs for the vaccines' destruction are not very high. "They probably run in the hundreds of thousands of euros for these 10 million doses, I cannot tell you exactly. Anyway, Romania paid a total of RON 2.5 billion for the delivered vaccines. (...) There are still many vaccines contracted, which we have no longer requested. We had separate discussions with each producer, trying to find amicable solutions. With one we managed to put an end to the matter, in that they will no longer ship us the contracted doses. We are still in talks with the others to find a solution, because (...), as you may realize, an extra 45 million doses of vaccine is a high amount," Alexandru Rafila explained, stressing that this amount has not been paid for and that the European Commission issued periodical notifications, after which a state had five days to decide whether it wanted the respective batch of vaccines or not.
