Estonia looking to donate 800,000 coronavirus vaccines
Estonia is exploring ways to donate hundreds of thousands of coronavirus vaccines to middle- and low-income countries, Minister of Foreign Affairs Eva-Maria Liimets (Center) said on Thursday.
Liimets said Estonia is willing to donate AstraZeneca vaccines but had not established the exact framework yet.
"Estonia is willing to donate vaccines. It is planned to donate 800,000 vaccines," she said at a government press conference on Thursday.
She said some of these doses will be donated through the COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access (COVAX) initiative and others to the EU's Eastern Partnership countries, which are priority countries for Estonian development aid.
"Among them, the most important are those partners who are actively looking towards the Euro-Atlantic future - Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova - but we are definitely thinking about the other three countries - Armenia, Azerbaijan and Belarus," Liimets said.
On Wednesday, after the COVAX Summit, Liimets said Estonia will donate an additional €70,000 to support the global "equal and fair distribution of vaccines".
Estonia is also looking for ways to "possibly contribute by donating 400,000 doses of vaccines", she wrote on social media.
Announced at the #COVAX AMC Summit that Estonia will donate additional 70 000 EUR to support equal and fair distribution of vaccines globally. is also exploring ways to possibly contribute by donating 400 000 doses of vaccines. Thank you and @gavi for hosting the Summit.
— Eva-Maria Liimets (@eliimets) June 2, 2021
The COVAX program aims to speed up access to 1.8 billion vaccine doses for middle- and low-income countries' populations. The United Nations-backed program has secured more than 132 million doses through donations.
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Editor: Helen Wright
