Michał Dworczyk told Poland’s PAP news agency that the number of doses to be resold would “depend on the level of vaccine uptake in the country.”
Michał Kuczmierowski, head of the Government Strategic Reserves Agency (RARS), which is expected to oversee the resale operation, said that Poland had ordered a total of about 100 million doses from various producers and that deliveries were expected to continue until the end of the first quarter of 2022.
Michał Kuczmierowski, head of the Government Strategic Reserves Agency. Photo: PAP/Grzegorz Michałowski
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 resale outside the country.
"However, we plan to sell many more vaccines … even tens of millions of doses,” Kuczmierowski said.
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.
Meanwhile, Australia and Vietnam have also expressed an interest in purchasing vaccines from Poland, according to the daily Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.
As of Wednesday, Poland had injected more than 17.5 million first doses of COVID-19 vaccines, while almost 15.5 million people had been fully inoculated, officials announced.
The tally includes two-dose vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and AstraZeneca as well as Johnson & Johnson's one-shot vaccine.
Poland on Wednesday reported 86 new coronavirus infections and six more deaths related to COVID-19, bringing the country's total number of cases during the pandemic to 2,881,046 and fatalities to 75,179.
(mrs/gs)
Source: PAP