Health minister Nelu Tataru announced on Tuesday, June 16, that Romania has joined the European system for the vaccine against the new coronavirus (COVID-19), and that talks will continue on Wednesday with the representative of the company that will produce the vaccine.

"Today (e.n. Tuesday) we signed up, we had the discussions, tomorrow we will also have talks with the representative for Eastern Europe of the company that makes this vaccine. As you know, we made a donation in this regard a month ago, at the level of the European community; we are where any scientific approach for this pandemic is," Tataru said at local news channel Digi24.

He said that the distribution of vaccines will be done based on the number of people in each country, but that Romania must be among the applicants.

Regarding a possible vaccine developed by the Cantacuzino Institute in Bucharest, the health minister said that "we cannot talk about a vaccine yet, we do not have a stabilized virus, we do not have a harvest, it is being studied." He added: "We are aware of what is happening worldwide, related to a more advanced phase of this vaccine. We want to be there, we want to have priority, and we want to have access to all the treatment that helps cure COVID-19 infection."

At the end of May, Timisoara-based OncoGen, the Romanian institute working on a vaccine against COVID-19, announced a partnership with the state-owned Cantacuzino Institute in Bucharest to continue developing the vaccine. The two institutes have won a RON 3.5 million (EUR 720,000) grant from the Ministry of Education and Research to continue their work.

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(Photo source: Gov.ro)