Romania pays EUR 12 million in advance to European Commission for the COVID-19 vaccine

Florin Cîţu, the Minister of Finance, announced on Wednesday the transfer of €12.058.345 to the European Commission, representing an advance payment for the first batch of the vaccine against the new coronavirus.

The government supplemented on Monday, through the third and last budget amendment for 2020, the necessary funding for the contribution to the European Commission and the prefinancing of the vaccine manufacturers. In this way, the Minister declared, Romania is sure to be among the first countries with access to this vaccine.

The PM Ludovic Orban stated last week that the vaccine will be distributed proportionally to each EU country's population. The distribution will be done in several batches, depending on the manufacturing capacity of the pharmaceutical companies. 

The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, announced on Tuesday a contract signed with Moderna. The American company will deliver up to 160 million vaccine shots. This is the sixth contract signed by the EU with a pharmaceutical company for a future COVID-19 vaccine. The previously signed contracts are with AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson (up to 400 million shots each), Sanofi-GSK (up to 300 million shots), the American-German joint venture Pfizer-BioNTech (up to 300 million shots), and CureVac (up to 405 million shots).

The vaccine distribution will start only after the approval of the European regulatory body EMA (European Medicines Agency). The estimated timeline for the delivery of the first batches is the beginning of 2021.

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