AUSTRIA, December 28 - Sub-head: 956,500 doses of AstraZeneca to arrive in Bangladesh on Wednesday

This Wednesday, another Austrian vaccine donation will reach its destination. This time, the valuable cargo will be going to the Bangladeshi capital of Dhaka. Two refrigerated containers, loaded with 956,550 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine from Austria, are expected to arrive in the Southeast Asian country on Wednesday afternoon (local time).

The donation to Bangladesh is yet another expression of Austrian vaccination solidarity. In the second half of 2021, Austria bilaterally donated 3,162,000 vaccine doses to countries in need. Most recently, for example, there were deliveries to Costa Rica, Vietnam, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Austria also recently handed over just under 1 million Johnson & Johnson vaccine doses to COVAX and distributed them through the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) to people in Afghanistan, Burkina Faso and the Philippines.

In many parts of the world, unfortunately, vaccines are still urgently needed and scarce. While Austria has enough vaccines available for the entire population, there are still too many countries that cannot cover their vaccine needs themselves. Austria continues to show solidarity here – with this donation to Bangladesh, Austria has now donated more than 4 million vaccine doses to indigent countries in the last six months,

says Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg.

Furthermore, in its role as vaccine coordinator of the EU Vaccine Sharing Mechanism, Austria ensured the distribution of 650,000 BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine doses to six Western Balkan countries in spring 2021.

This pandemic will not be over until it has ended everywhere in the world. That’s why I am proud Austria is making such an important contribution with vaccine donations, showing great solidarity in this area. With the delivery to Bangladesh, we have now donated more than 4 million doses since this summer to countries that urgently need the vaccine. The first Austrian donations through COVAX also reached their destinations in December,

said Minister of Health Wolfgang Mückstein.