Wojciech Andrusiewicz told state news agency PAP that the government plans to sell vaccines to countries including Ukraine and Balkan nations.
Poland has ordered a total of about 100 million doses from various producers, and deliveries are expected to continue until the end of the first quarter of 2022, according to Andrusiewicz.
Meanwhile, the level of vaccine uptake in the country has fallen sharply over the last few weeks, officials said, as Poles started their summer holidays.
Nearly 41 million doses of various COVID-19 vaccines have arrived in Poland so far, according to government data.
Under contracts signed with the European Commission, Poland has at least 4 million doses available for sale outside the country.
Michał Kuczmierowski, head of the Government Strategic Reserves Agency (RARS), which is expected to oversee the resale operation, has said Poland aims to sell tens of millions of doses.
Poland’s surplus vaccines will go to Ukraine and Georgia—as part of the European Union’s Eastern Partnership initiative to reach out to its eastern neighbours—and to selected Balkan countries, Kuczmierowski told reporters earlier this month.
Meanwhile, Australia and Vietnam have also expressed an interest in purchasing vaccines from Poland, according to the Dziennik Gazeta Prawna newspaper.
A total of 33,083,693 COVID-19 vaccine shots have been administered in Poland so far, including 151,816 over the last 24 hours, officials announced on Wednesday.
As of Wednesday, Poland had injected more than 17.8 million first doses of COVID-19 vaccines, while over 16.4 million people had been fully inoculated, health ministry data showed.
Poland on Wednesday reported 124 new coronavirus infections and three more deaths related to COVID-19, bringing the country's total number of cases during the pandemic to 2,881,718 and fatalities to 75,222.
(tf/gs)
Source: PAP