1 hr 52 min ago
The Czech Republic becomes the second EU country to ask for China's Sinopharm vaccine
From CNN's Tomas Etzler in Prague
A nurse in Budapest, Hungary, holds a dose of the Covid-19 vaccine developed by China's Sinopharm on February 25. Attila Kisbenedek/AFP/Getty Images
The Czech Republic has requested doses of China’s Sinopharm coronavirus vaccine, according to a tweet from the Czech president's spokesman Jiri Ovcacek. The nation has now become the second country in the European Union (EU) to request Sinopharm, following Hungary.
The shot has not been approved by the EU's vaccine regulator, the European Medicines Agency (EMA).
"The Prime Minister asked the President of the Republic to contact the President of the PRC with a request for the delivery of the Chinese vaccine Sinopharm,” Ovcacek said on Twitter.
“The Chinese side decided to immediately accommodate this request," he added.
The announcement came after Czech health minister Jan Blatny said on Wednesday that there was no reason to import unregistered vaccines, because insurance companies could not cover the application of such vaccines.
President Miloš Zeman's move attracted criticism from the country’s opposition parties who described his action’s as “hazardous" for vaccine confidence.
To undermine a fragile trust of many Czechs in vaccination by using insufficiently verified vaccines is hazardous," opposition leader Marketa Pekarova Adamova said on Wednesday according to Czech media.
She added: "All vaccines should have equal conditions -- if we demand Pfizer, Johnson&Johnson, AstraZeneca [vaccines] and others approval from EMA, we also have to demand it for Sinopharm or Sputnik [Russia's vaccine]."
President Zeman also said in a televised interview on Sunday that he sent a letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin asking him for delivery of Sputnik V. Putin agreed to help, according to Zeman.
The Czech Republic has been hit hard by Covid-19, with hospitals in the country's Central-Bohemian and Pardubice districts this declaring a state of “mass disability of persons."
This is where hospitals run out of bed space and suffer staff shortages, meaning the quality of care does not comply to national health and safety standards.
The country has recorded more than 1.2 million Covid-19 infections and over 21,000 deaths since the start of the pandemic.