Romania is to receive an additional 500,000 doers of Pfizer BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine on Monday, authorities said.
So far, it has received almost 3 million doses of Pfizer since it began its vaccine rollout in late December. It has 200,000 of those left.
The country is currently in the third phase of its vaccination drive. About 2.12 million people have received at least one jab so far, which is just under 11% of the population according to graphs.ro
The shipment of 511,290 doses will be flown to airports in the capital, Bucharest, the western city of Cluj and the southwestern city of Timisoara later in the day.
The pharmaceutical company will deliver the vaccines by road to vaccine centers, the National Vaccination Coordination Committee said Monday.
The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine needs to be kept at around -70 C while it’s transported. That’s 50 degrees colder than any other vaccine currently used.
Shipping the jabs requires a lot of dry ice (carbon dioxide in solid form at around -78 degrees Celsius), and isothermic boxes. Boxes contain almost 1,000 vials or nearly 5,000 doses.
Here is a list of the regional vaccine storage centers:
- Bucharest National Center: 171,990 doses
- Brasov Regional Center: 66,690 doses
- Cluj Center: 76,050 doses
- Constanta Regional Center: 58,500 doses
- Craiova Regional Center : 33,930 doses
- Iasi Regional Center : 45,630 doses
- Timisoara Regional Center: 58,500 doses.
Romania has received 2,863,439 doses of Pfizer vaccines. Of those, 2,641,000 have been used.
The vaccination centers will use both doses received by Romania in the current delivery combined with previous shipments.
The vaccine rollout is dependent on delivery by pharmaceutical companies.
