AstraZeneca to cut vaccine deliveries to Czech Republic by 40%

Deliveries of AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines to the Czech Republic will be reduced by 40 percent and they will be markedly lower in the next two weeks, representatives from the Smart Quarantine project wrote on Twitter today.

"Next week, 9,600 instead of 16,800 doses will arrive. The following week we will receive 10,867 doses instead of the promised 88,000. But 99,859 doses will arrive by the end of the month," they tweeted.

The Smart Quarantine team tweeted on Saturday that the AstraZeneca firm will reduce its vaccine deliveries to Europe by 73 percent.

Some European countries including Austria, Denmark and Italy have stopped using the AstraZeneca vaccine because of suspected serious side effects, for example blood clots. The Czech Republic does not plan on taking any such measure.

The Czech Republic has ordered a total of three million AstraZeneca vaccine doses. The country was supposed to receive 200,000 doses in February and 400,000 doses in March.

According to the Institute of Health Information and Statistics, a total of 164,000 AstraZeneca doses were delivered to vaccination centers by March 12.

According to the Health Ministry data on vaccination, 121,655 AstraZeneca doses have been administered as of Friday evening.

About 11.6 percent of the total number of vaccine doses administered in the Czech Republic have been from AstraZeneca. Vaccines from Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna make up the bulk of those administered so far.

Health Minister Jan Blatný said earlier this week that the Czech Republic will receive a total of 1.1 million vaccine doses in March, while about 900,000 were delivered to the country in the first two months of the year.

More than two million doses should be delivered in April, over 2.5 million in May, and more than three million in June. All of the vaccines currently used in the Czech Republic need to be administered in two separate doses.

The European Medicines Agency approved use of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine in the EU earlier this week. Unlike the other vaccines currently being used, only a single dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is needed. The first doses may be delivered to the Czech Republic in late April.