Health Minister Johannes Rauch (Greens) wants to renegotiate existing corona vaccine contracts. The goal is to call for vaccines if necessary and delay some of them until fall of next year, he said Wednesday. The day before, he had presented a vaccination campaign.
“It is now the task in Prague to negotiate more flexibility with manufacturers,” Health Minister Johannes Rauch said on Wednesday before an informal meeting of his European colleagues. “Now it is much easier to estimate what the need is,” said the minister with conviction. Austria currently has approximately 17 million vaccine doses in stock. Another shipment, which has already been ordered, is about “12 million cans, of which two million are Moderna and ten million are Pfizer.”
“Everyone has too much vaccine”
A vaccine shortage is therefore not to be expected – on the contrary. “Everyone has too much vaccine right now.” The aim of the negotiations with the manufacturers is therefore that vaccines can be called up in the future if necessary. A part will be postponed to the autumn of next year and cans must also be able to be passed on. According to Rauch, the latter can be done more easily together with aid organizations and the Austrian Development Agency (ADA). “The transfer of cans is very strictly regulated in the contracts. I try very hard to keep an eye on the Global South as well.”
The Minister of Health, on the other hand, wants to stick to the joint European purchasing process. “As a small country, we don’t stand a chance if we fail to agree on this at European level,” explains Rauch. Austria has so far spent 750 million euros on the corona vaccines. This has to be seen in relation to the other costs in the pandemic. Rauch mentioned 3.4 billion euros for testing and one billion euros per week of lockdown.
results in the fall?
He hopes that there will be results from the manufacturers in the autumn. The talks have so far been “constructive”. The monkey pox vaccine will be discussed at the meeting of EU ministers in Prague. Austria currently has more than 4000 cans. A maximum of 30,000 would be needed.
Source: Krone
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