Albania will start very soon the anti – Covid vaccination of the elderly over 60 years old, has said Prime Minister Edi Rama, who announced in Shkodra, northern Albania, that a ‘considerable’ supply of vaccines will arrive within a short time. According to Rama, with the arrival of this amount of vaccines the vaccination will start with the age of over 60 years old people, to continue with those under this age.
“It is important to increase the intensity, to vaccinate and reduce the links of the chain of infections and to facilitate the tourist season as a start. I believe that we will finally have other good news and we will have at our disposal a considerable amount of vaccines to extend very strongly beyond these categories to get the whole category to the age over 60 and then to continue with the people under the age of 60 with that objective that I said,” Rama noted.
Asked if the electoral campaign ahead of the April 25 general elections would influence on the spread of the infection, Rama, who is also head of the Socialist Party, accused the opposition of creating potential infective sites in centers of different towns.
“These are things that should be avoided. This is the challenge of challenges because it has neither party nor electoral subject and such a behavior has nothing to do with the differences we have with any other society in a normal world,” he said, adding that this is a challenge for health. “No one’s health can be endangered and even of all those who are the participants in such ‘weddings’. They (party leaders) must protect themselves and others because these stories with screams and two fingers are stories of the 90s and are repeated every time the elections come. You say that nothing has changed here. In fact, it is so because that is the reason why they lose,” Rama said.
In the meantime, the vaccination of teachers continued on Thursday amid fears of the safety of AstraZeneca vaccine which is being administered in Albania. Medical specialists were divided on the risk of the vaccine in TV talks on Wednesday evening with some demanding suspension of it for a few days until EMA, the EU health authority, comes out with an official stance on the issue.
But government health official and their supporters insisted on the continuation of the vaccination and Rama’s trip to Shkodra, a bastion of the Democratic Party, was linked with this as teachers there have expressed suspicions on the vaccine. AstraZeneca has been suspended in more than a dozen EU countries, including Germany. /argumentum.al
