January 13 (SeeNews) - Slovenia expects to receive a total of 2 million doses of the coronavirus vaccines developed by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna by the end of 2021, enough to immunise about half of its population, prime minister Janez Jansa said.
"Altogether, we will have over 2 million doses of the two vaccines already approved in Europe this year, which is enough to vaccinate 1.1 million people," Jansa told a news conference on Tuesday, as cited in a government statement.
Slovenia also expects to receive 1.4 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine following its approval by the European Medicines Agency, Jansa said.
The government will receive 245,000 doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine in the first quarter of 2021 and will start the immunisation of people over 70 years of age in the last week of January, the director of National Institute of Public Health, Milan Krek, said as seen in a video file posted on the website of the Slovenian government.
A total of 9,200 doses of the Moderna vaccine will be delivered by February 1 and will be used for the immunisation of handicapped persons in their homes, Krek, noted.
According to data from the World Health Organisation, the total number of COVID-19 cases confirmed since the outbreak of the pandemic in Slovenia, a country with a population of 2.1 million, totalled 139,713 as of Wednesday. The coronavirus-related deaths stood at 3,147.