Poland is planning to sell tens of millions of unused doses of coronavirus vaccines to other countries, as the number of people registering for jabs continues to slow. Ukraine and Georgia are among those to have expressed interest, says Michał Dworczyk, the minister in charge of the vaccine rollout.
“We want to use surplus for resale,” Michał Kuczmierowski, head of the Government Strategic Reserves Agency, told the Polish Press Agency (PAP). This has been “considered from the very beginning”, when Poland ordered an initial 100 million vaccine doses for its population of around 38 million people.
According to government data, 41 million doses of vaccine have so far been delivered to Poland through the EU-wide scheme run through the European Commission. However, Poland’s vaccination rate has been slowing, meaning some vaccines may not be used before their expiry date.
This map by @sheemawn of vaccination rates in Poland shows that more rural areas (especially in the east) have generally vaccinated less than urban areas (especially in the west).
Via: https://t.co/NwWtUk727u pic.twitter.com/XKUk7J78Mc
— Daniel Tilles (@danieltilles1) July 13, 2021
A report in the Dziennik Gazeta Prawna daily earlier this week suggested that Poland intended to sell around four million doses to countries in its eastern neighbourhood. But Kuczmierowski has now confirmed that they are “planning to resell significantly more” than that.
AstraZeneca vaccines, which have been the least popular among the four available in Poland, are the most likely candidates to be sold on. Kuczmierowski said that a reserve of single-dose Johnson & Johnson shots, which can be stored for up to two years, will be maintained for possible immediate use.
The total number of doses sold is likely to be tens of millions, Dworczyk told PAP, but the precise figure will “depend on the dynamics of vaccination in Poland”. Dworczyk recently warned of a “very disturbing” decline in the number of people registering for vaccinations in Poland.
The government has taken a number of steps to encourage people to sign up, including launching a lottery in which fully vaccinated people can win prizes of up to one million zloty (€222,000).
Main image credit: Sebastian Rothwyn/New York National Guard (under CC BY-ND 2.0)
Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.
