BRATISLAVA, Slovakia (AFP) — Slovakia, a country suffering the world’s highest mortality rate from Covid-19, has received a donation of 15,000 coronavirus vaccine doses from France, Slovak Prime Minister Igor Matovic said on Sunday.
Matovic described the Oxford-AstraZeneca doses as a “very kind and useful gift” and a “great gesture of friendship”, at a news conference with French Ambassador Christophe Leonzi, local press agency TASR reported.
Speaking in Bojnice, western Slovakia, the premier added that France had supported the idea of the European Union urgently sending 100,000 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine to Slovakia.
An EU nation of 5.4 million people, Slovakia has registered an average of 24.09 deaths per 100,000 residents over the past 14 days — the highest rate in the world.
The Slovak health ministry on Sunday announced that it had identified the South African strain of Covid-19 in seven samples taken in the country.
© Agence France-Presse
