Far behind schedule to reach a goal of 70 percent of the population to slow the COVID-19 pandemic, Greece’s slow-rolling vaccination program has only 3.9 percent being inoculated because of far fewer deliveries of doses than expected.
Health authorities said only 410,000 people of the population of more than 10.5 million have received shots – two being required three weeks apart in the version from the US pharmaceutical company Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech.
Apart from a handful of politicians who jumped the line to make sure they were first – saying it was done to set an example for others – most of the vaccines have gone to the elderly and those with multiple or other conditions putting them most at-risk.
Front line health care workers are being taken care of too, and some 73 percent of doctors have also been vaccinated and more Greeks are coming around to wanting the shot after initially fearing it wasn’t safe nor effective.
Health Ministry Secretary-General for Primary Health Care, Marios Themistokleous, said 45,000 doses of the version made by the United Kingdom’s AstraZeneca jab had arrived, approved for people aged under 65.
On Feb. 10, an online platform will then be opened for those 60-64 to get that vaccine, to begin on Feb. 15. On Feb. 17, it will open for those 75-79 as he said the goal is to finish those groups in March.
Read more at thenationalherald.com
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