Vaccination coverage in Romania, for all types of vaccines, has dropped in the last ten years from 90% to less than 80%, Health minister Alexandru Rafila said on Monday.

„Vaccination coverage in Romania has declined. In the last ten years it has dropped from a vaccination coverage that exceeded 90% to a vaccination coverage that is below 80% for all vaccines. For measles there are two doses of vaccine. For the first dose we have around 80-82% [coverage, editor’s note], for the second dose – 68%. (…) We have many cases of measles, we already have 12 deaths recorded, which were perfectly avoidable if people were vaccinated,” the minister told Euronews Romania.

Referring to the COVID vaccine, Alexandru Rafila said that there are currently three million doses in storage and seven million doses have been destroyed or will be destroyed in the next period.

„About 94 million doses of COVID vaccine were initially contracted, the quantity was reduced to about 80 million which we were in charge of buying by selling some of them. (…) Some 36 or 37 million doses were actually purchased and used. They were multi-dose vials. You vaccinated three or four people and the rest up to 10 or 8 doses that were in the vial was not used. (…) About 7 million doses have been destroyed or will be destroyed in the next period. Three million doses are still in storage. A quantity of almost 29 million doses which Romania had committed to purchase have not been purchased and are the subject of a dispute with Pfizer,” said the Health minister.

AGERPRES