COVID-19: Romania to receive first Johnson & Johnson vaccine doses this week

The first batch of 60,000 doses of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine will arrive in Romania this week, on April 15, according to Andrei Baciu, Secretary of State in the Ministry of Health, Economica.net reported.

This will be the fourth vaccine used in Romania, in addition to the ones produced by Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, and AstraZeneca. A new batch of 511,290 Pfizer-BioNTech is set to arrive in Romania on Monday, April 12.

Andrei Baciu said that the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine will be used by the family doctors who have joined the COVID-19 vaccination campaign, but will also to distributed to the mobile vaccination centers set to open later this month.

Valeriu Gheorghita, the coordinator of the national vaccination campaign, previously said that the mobile centers would go to rural localitieswhere the population doesn't have access to vaccination centers or family doctors. Vaccination in such centers could start on April 20.

Romanian officials plan to accelerate the COVID-19 vaccination campaign, as the country is set to receive more vaccines in April and May. According to Valeriu Gheorghita, the number of people vaccinated daily will increase to about 80,000 starting Tuesday, April 13.

"I looked at next week's appointments. Starting […] Tuesday, we will have about 80,000 people vaccinated daily. We currently have 80,000 people scheduled per day, people who have booked a spot in vaccination centers, 60,000 with Pfizer, about 10,000 with Moderna, the rest with AstraZeneca," Gheorghita said at local news channel Digi24, Stiri.tvr.ro reported.

According to the official report released on Sunday, a total of 56,988 people received a COVID-19 vaccine in 24 hours in Romania.

Doctor Valeriu Gheorghita also said that vaccination of children between 12 and 15 years old could start this fall in Romania, as Pfizer applied for authorization for this age group as well, News.ro wrote.

Romania kicked off the vaccination campaign on December 27. By April 11, more than 2.28 million people received the vaccine: 873,759 got the first dose, and over 1.41 million received both doses.