Finland among first countries to get coronavirus vaccine

Family Affairs and Social Services Minister Krista Kiuru on Saturday said Finland would be among the first states to get coronavirus vaccines.

Talking to the Yle’s Ykkösaamu (Morning Breakfast) programme, the minister also viewed that it is not likely that Finland would be completely free from coronavirus by the midsummer, reported the national broadcaster Yle.

“We’ll be among the first [countries] to get the vaccine. We’ll start as soon as it’s possible, but experts need to evaluate what types of risks we’re willing to take,” the Yle report quoted Kiuru as saying.

Earlier, in August, Finland decided to take part in the joint European Union (EU) agreement to purchase coronavirus vaccines.

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) is scheduled to convene over two Covid-19 vaccines – one developed by Pfizer and BioNTech and the other by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford.

The European Union (EU) reached an agreement with the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca to purchase at least 300 million doses of a potential vaccine (Oxford vaccine) on behalf of the EU member states.

It also made another deal with the German pharmaceutical company BioNTech SE and US company Pfizer to order 200 million doses of a potential COVID-19 vaccine.