First Doses of COVID-19 Vaccine Could Arrive on December 28

An initial allocation of roughly 9,750 COVID-19 vaccine doses could be received in the Czech Republic on December 28, with initial priority given to health care workers.

According to the Czech Vaccinological Society, half doses should be delivered in Prague and the other half in Brno. To receive immunity, adults need to receive two doses.

Minister of Health Jan Blatný (ANO) said on Friday that the vaccination in the Czech Republic could begin in six-eight weeks.

“If everything goes as planned, the vaccination of about 5.5 million people, which is about 60-70 percent of the adult population, should be completed at the end of next summer,” the minister said.

The Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, which was announced to be 90% effective at protecting people from coronavirus, needs to be stored at around -70C.

According to the government’s strategy, the vaccine should be delivered to one million people in the first quarter of 2021, to 2.62 million people in the second quarter, to 2.42 million people in the third quarter, and to 382,000 people in the last three months of next year.

Vaccination should be voluntary and fully covered by public health insurance.

People over 65 years old and younger patients with serious diseases should be the first group to be vaccinated. According to the latest statistics, there are over 2.13 million seniors in the Czech Republic, making up one-fifth of the country’s population.

Officially, no vaccine against the new type of coronavirus has yet been approved in the European Union.

On December 8th, the United Kingdom has become the first country in the world to administer the new Covid-19 vaccine developed jointly by the American drugmaker Pfizer and Germany’s BioNTech.

Britain has ordered 40 million doses of the vaccine, just enough for about a third of the population as two shots of the drug are needed per person to gain immunity.