Austria to give Czech Republic 30,000 doses of coronavirus vaccine

Austria will provide the Czech Republic with 30,000 doses of coronavirus vaccine, Chancellor Sebastian Kurz's office said on Friday in what is called a display of solidarity after it felt the European Union did not do enough to help its neighbor. After days of negotiations, EU ambassadors on Thursday agreed to change the bloc's vaccine distribution system for 10 million BioNTech-Pfizer doses due to be delivered in the second quarter, so needier countries could receive more.

Austria will provide the Czech Republic with 30,000 doses of coronavirus vaccine, Chancellor Sebastian Kurz's office said on Friday in what it called a display of solidarity after it felt the European Union did not do enough to help its neighbour.

After days of negotiations, EU ambassadors on Thursday agreed to change the bloc's vaccine distribution system for 10 million BioNTech-Pfizer doses due to be delivered in the second quarter, so needier countries could receive more. Of those 10 million doses, 2.85 million so-called "solidarity vaccines" will be shared between five countries - Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Latvia and Slovakia.

Austria said on Thursday night it was "incomprehensible" that its neighbour the Czech Republic, which has been hit hard by the more dangerous British variant of the virus, was not given more doses. On Friday it followed up on a pledge to act alone. "We will...support the Czech Republic bilaterally with 30,000 doses of vaccine and believe it is very positive that we have also heard that other European countries are prepared to do the same," a statement by Kurz's office said.

"We do not want to accept that one of our neighbouring countries is left behind," it added. Kurz is under fire from the opposition for Austria's failure to order as many vaccine doses as it was entitled to under the EU scheme. It failed in a bid to obtain more doses than its regular per-capita share on Thursday.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)