"Europe is a powerful market that has been hard hit by COVID-19," Mateusz Morawiecki said on Thursday. "Every day we are all paying a huge price for displaying a weakness toward drug makers. We can't stand aside and watch the next waves of infections engulf us."
W Europie trwa szczepionkowy wyścig z czasem. Dziś nie mamy ani chwili do stracenia. Koncerny farmaceutyczne muszą...
Posted by Mateusz Morawiecki on Thursday, February 18, 2021
He added: "The Polish vaccination system is prepared to vaccinate the country's entire adult population quickly, but we need the right amount of vaccine doses."
Morawiecki also said that "the EU must demonstrate it can effectively take care of the interests of EU citizens."
"What is at stake is not only the credibility of European institutions, but the lives and health of the Polish people and millions of Europeans," he told a news conference during a visit to a vaccination centre in Katowice, southern Poland.
The European Union, of which Poland is part, has struck deals to secure vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech, AstraZeneca, Moderna, CureVac, Sanofi-GSK, and Johnson & Johnson.
Morawiecki's chief of staff, Michał Dworczyk, said last month that a move by Pfizer to reduce the supply of COVID-19 shots had forced Poland to modify its vaccination plans.
Poland on Friday reported 8,777 new coronavirus infections and 241 more deaths, bringing its total number of cases during the pandemic to 1,623,218 and fatalities to 41,823.
A total of 2,556,999 COVID-19 vaccine shots have been administered in Poland so far, including a record 167,939 over the last 24 hours, officials announced on Friday.
(gs/pk)
Source: IAR, PAP, TVP Info