The European Union has struck a deal to buy up to 300 million doses of a potential coronavirus vaccine from US pharmaceutical firm Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech.
Deliveries are expected to start by the end of this year, assuming the vaccine is cleared by regulators and approved for general use. The deal comes after Pfizer and BioNTech announced on Monday that their experimental COVID-19 vaccine was more than 90 percent effective based on initial trial results.
Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said on Monday that millions of vaccines against the coronavirus were likely to reach his country next spring as part of a European deal with drug makers. He added that the vaccine would be made available to citizens on an optional basis and be first administered to senior citizens, healthcare professionals and law enforcement personnel.
Source – Polskie Radio
Poland’s prime minister has said his country does not need to impose a national lockdown in the days ahead because the number of new coronavirus infections began to fall this week for the first time in two months.
Mateusz Morawiecki wrote in a post on Facebook that Poland had 65 people infected per 100,000 inhabitants which he said was a lot but was a „signal of stabilization” and that the government strategies and restrictions were starting to have an effect.
Poland yesterday reported 22,683 new coronavirus infections down from a peak of almost 28,000 new cases reported on November 7th.
Source – Polskie Radio
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said this week that he has sent a letter to EU leaders regarding the conditionality mechanism linked with the EU budget.
The prime minister said that Poland cannot accept a version of the conditionality mechanism that leads to the primacy of political and arbitrary criteria over substantive evaluation.
Last week, negotiators representing the European Parliament and the current German EU presidency developed a detailed agreement on the rule of law mechanism for the next EU budget. Under the proposal, a decision to freeze funds for a member state that breaches the EU’s rule of law rules could be passed by a qualified majority.
Source – PAP
The clinical emergency department of the University Clinical Centre of Gdańsk has announced this week that it has reopened emergency admissions and its trauma centre ward which was closed at the end of October as a result of the high number of Covid-19 infections among medical staff and patients.
A representative of the centre said that the department is now working normally and is accepting admissions. Patients who are deemed to be high risk are being tested for Coronavirus infection using antigen tests. Patients are also reminded that a visit to the centre is only recommended if it is deemed to be absolutely necessary.
Sources – gdansk.pl
Weather
Today will be a cloudy day with light rain and a gentle breeze and temperatures reaching 7 degrees centigrade (45 degrees Fahrenheit) during the day, dropping to 4 degrees centigrade overnight. Saturday will remain cloudy with a gentle breeze and temperatures with temperatures reaching 9 degrees centigrade during the day, and 7 degrees overnight.
