Heger: Friday EU Summit Revolved Around Shortage of Vaccines

Porto/Bratislava, May 8 (TASR-correspondent) - The fulcrum of Friday's (May 7) summit of EU leaders, held in Portuguese Porto, was mostly the coronavirus pandemic and the shortage of vaccines, Slovak Prime Minister Eduard Heger (OLaNO) told journalists before the start of Saturday talks. "The most resonating news was that we will still face production shortages on the supply side of vaccines. We talked also about the broad global aspect of this, as we're aware that at the moment we perceive the collective immunity only from the national point of view perhaps, but it's necessary to start seeing it also from the European point of view," underlined Heger. Slovakia emphasized in this context that it's important to take into account the vaccination rate in the whole EU when distributing vaccines. Seeing as the world today is quite open and interconnected, Heger believes that it's necessary to make an effort to "destroy" COVID-19 worldwide and high rates of vaccination are needed globally for that to happen. "This is the great challenge that we discussed. It's necessary to bolster the production capacities of individual firms and gradually secure sufficient amounts of vaccines also for other countries," added Heger. mf