Later in the day, a delayed third shipment of 82,000 doses of a vaccine produced by US drug maker Moderna was expected to be delivered to the country, Michał Kuczmierowski, head of the country's Material Reserves Agency (ARM), told the media.
On Monday, a plane carrying a fresh supply of around 320,000 doses of a COVID-19 vaccine developed by US pharmaceutical firm Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech arrived at Warsaw’s Chopin Airport, public broadcaster Polish Radio’s IAR news agency reported.
Vaccine shipments arriving in Poland are routinely transferred to the Material Reserves Agency's warehouses, from where they are distributed to pharmaceutical wholesalers and then to hospitals and vaccination sites across the country, officials have said.
The first batch of 10,000 Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine doses arrived in Poland on December 26.
A day later a 52-year-old Warsaw hospital nurse became the first Pole to be vaccinated against the coronavirus.
As of Thursday, nearly 1.9 million COVID-19 vaccine shots had been administered across the country.
The immunization effort began after the European Medicines Agency (EMA) on December 21 recommended conditional approval for a coronavirus vaccine produced by Pfizer and BioNTech for use across the European Union.
That decision by the EU regulator was subsequently greenlighted by the bloc’s executive, the European Commission.
The European Medicines Agency on January 6 gave the green light to a COVID-19 vaccine developed by US drug maker Moderna, the second shot it had approved, as countries stepped up inoculation efforts amid fears of more contagious strains of the coronavirus.
The first delivery of 27,000 doses of the Moderna vaccine arrived in Poland on January 12, followed by a further 42,000 doses on January 31.
The European medicines regulator on January 29 approved the AstraZeneca/Oxford University vaccine for people over the age of 18, the third coronavirus shot to be cleared for use in the EU.
Poland on February 6 received its first delivery of 120,000 doses of the AstraZeneca/Oxford University vaccine, according to officials.
In the first quarter of this year, around 3.1 million people are expected to be vaccinated for COVID-19 throughout the country.
Frontline healthcare workers are first in line to be inoculated, followed by nursing home residents, the elderly, people with chronic health conditions, teachers, police, and soldiers.
Poland last month began administering COVID-19 vaccines to its senior citizens.
The country is set to begin vaccinating teachers on Friday. Teachers aged up to 60 will be given the AstraZeneca/Oxford University vaccine, officials have said.
Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki announced in December that his government had secured vaccines for the Polish population from six leading international drug makers.
The European Union, of which Poland is part, has struck deals to secure vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech, AstraZeneca, Moderna, CureVac, Sanofi-GSK, and Johnson & Johnson.
Poland originally announced plans to spend PLN 3 billion (EUR 675 million, USD 820 million) on more than 60 million doses of coronavirus vaccines under a national inoculation program adopted by the government.
Last week, the prime minister's chief of staff, Michał Dworczyk, said that Poland had ordered almost 100 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines in total, enough to inoculate 58 million people, more than its population of around 38 million.
Polish Health Minister Adam Niedzielski has said that around 6.7 million coronavirus vaccine doses are expected to reach the country by the end of March, including 4.8 million from Pfizer/BioNTech, 1.15 million from AstraZeneca, and 744,000 from Moderna.
Around 6,000 vaccination sites are available to citizens as the country rolls out its COVID-19 vaccination programme.
Dworczyk said last month that a move by Pfizer to reduce the supply of COVID-19 shots had forced Poland to modify its vaccination plans.
He said in a tweet earlier this month that, in terms of coronavirus vaccine doses given per 100 people, "Poland has outdistanced" many other European countries, including Germany and France, and "far exceeded the EU average."
"We would like to thank all the people and institutions involved in the national vaccination programme," Dworczyk said.
The government at the end of December launched a media campaign called Szczepimy Się (Let's Get Vaccinated) to encourage Poles to get COVID-19 shots.
Poland on Thursday reported 7,008 new coronavirus infections and 456 more deaths, bringing its total number of cases during the pandemic to 1,570,658 and fatalities to 40,177.
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Source: IAR, PAP
