Malta has been allocated 330,000 doses of a COVID-19 vaccine that could potentially start being produced in the coming weeks.
Health Minister Chris Fearne announced the development through a tweet on Saturday: "If a COVID-19 vaccine is developed in the coming weeks, Malta has already been allocated 330,000 doses. This means we will be one of the first countries to protect vulnerable people and frontliners. We will later acquire more doses for the whole population."
Fearne told Times of Malta the country spearheaded an initiative for the fair distribution of the inoculation.
“As far back as February, our greatest concern over the availability of an eventual COVID-19 vaccine was the possibility of the larger countries monopolising supplies and leaving smaller countries without early access.
"We therefore spearheaded an initiative within the European Health Council for the EU to procure the vaccine jointly and distribute fairly to all countries. This initiative has been taken up by the European Commission and Malta has negotiated an initial allocation of 330,000 doses - which will be available to us with the first batch of production and at the same time as the other, larger European Countries. In total we have 500,000 doses on order.”
The EU states will be acquiring the vaccine from AstraZeneca, a British–Swedish multinational pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical company based in Cambridge, England.
AstraZeneca is partnering in the enterprise with Britain's Oxford University, which has pioneered the inoculation. Trials are moving fast and are expected to be concluded by the end of the year.
In June, Germany, France, Italy and the Netherlands signed an agreement with AstraZeneca to guarantee the supply to the EU of 300 million doses of a possible coronavirus vaccine.
On Thursday, the first contract that the European Commission negotiated on behalf of EU member states with AstraZeneca entered into force.
The contract will allow for the purchase of a vaccine against COVID-19 for all states, as well as the donation to lower and middle income countries or the re-direction to other European countries.