Covid-19 vaccines cost Luxembourg taxpayer over €50m
A further €13 million worth of doses have been ordered, but are yet to be delivered and paid for, Health Minister says
The Grand Duchy has ordered another 630,000 doses of the Pfizer-BioNtech jab © Photo credit: dpa
Luxembourg's campaign to vaccinate its population against Covid-19 has cost taxpayers at least €51 million, Health Minister Paulette Lenert said on Friday, with vaccines worth €13 million yet to be delivered and paid for, as the pandemic recedes.
The Grand Duchy has ordered another 630,000 doses of the Pfizer-BioNtech jab, which will be delivered throughout 2023 and 2024, costing the state another €12.3 million, Lenert told Christian-Democrat (CSV) lawmaker Marc Spautz in a written response to a parliamentary question.
A separate deal worth €680,000 for delivery of 34,000 doses of the Novavax vaccine are also yet to be delivered and paid for, Lenert added.
As of Thursday, Luxembourg had doled out close to 1.3 million doses of vaccine against Covid-19 since the rollout began in late 2020, figures from the health ministry show.
Almost half of that number - 620,000 doses - was donated to third countries, Lenert said, as supply vastly outstripped demand. The pandemic has been waning in Luxembourg, with just 660 new Covid-19 infections registered last week - much lower than during the peak, when weekly cases reached over 15,000 in January last year.
"I think it is important that everyone understands that we are actually at the end of the pandemic and that the responsibility (to stay healthy) lies with the people, not the state," Claude Muller, one of the country's top virologists, told broadcaster RTL three weeks ago.
The EU bought vaccines in bulk in the summer of 2020, when there was no treatment for Covid-19, and signed follow-up contracts to guarantee supplies for years to come.
However, with supply largely meeting demand, Brussels is in negotiations to stretch deliveries of the Pfizer-BioNTech jab, planned for 2023, into 2024 and 2025, Lenert said on Friday.
Luxembourg is set to give away 100,000 doses to Brazil next month, with Bangladesh turning down free jabs last year, the health minister said. Over 280,000 expired doses, destined for Luxembourg, had to be destroyed, she added, without saying how much those jabs cost the taxpayer.
