Health Minister Alexandru Rafila said that he has asked the European Commission to significantly reduce supplies of the vaccine against Covid-19 for this year and 2023.

Alexandru Rafila said Wednesday night on Antena 3 that Romania still has more than 8 million doses of the vaccine that will expire at some point, News.ro reported.

“We have more than 8 million doses of the vaccine in stock, they are stored. I don’t use it anymore. Some have accused me of all things, I am telling the truth and this is what I have learned that we must do if we respect our fellow citizens and are responsible for what we do as administrators. There are doses that practically could not be used due to lack of interest, and also could not be sold or even given away. They will run out at some point and need to be neutralized. This means other costs. We are discussing hundreds of millions of euros,” said Rafila.

He noted that Romania has appealed to the European Commission to reduce supplies of the vaccine against Covid-19.

“We have recently taken steps to be able to try, through a review of the negotiations that the European Commission is having with producers, to achieve two things that I think are very important, to achieve a significant reduction in supply for 2022 and 2023, significantly. (…) If this vaccine comes in much smaller quantities, it must be a vaccine adapted to the circulating variants, and we have made a variant for BA-4 BA – 5, because there is also a variant for BA-1, which seems to have some effect on the BA-4 BA-5 option,” explained Rafila.