Sweden administers 1m COVID-19 vaccines

Sweden has already administered one million COVID-19 vaccine doses, Minister for Health and Social Affairs Lena Hallengren said here on Wednesday, almost one year to the day when the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the novel coronavirus a pandemic, reported Xinhua.

"By the end of today, Sweden will have carried out one million vaccinations against COVID-19," Hallengren told journalists.

"There is no doubt that (the vaccines) have had an effect. The number of cases has fallen dramatically in nursing homes, where over 90 percent of the residents have received at least one dose of vaccine," Hallengren said, presenting a graph outlining the spread of the infections.

During the first week of 2021, nearly 800 new COVID-19 infections were confirmed among nursing home residents. In the last few weeks, new cases there were nearly non-existent while the number of infections has increased among the general public.

Marie Morell, head of the healthcare department of the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions, said the country's health system had the capacity to administer 1.2 million vaccine doses per week, provided vaccines are available. The delivery problems that initially marred the vaccine rollout are expected to be rectified, she said.

A new shipment of half a million vaccine doses is expected to arrive in Sweden this week. In the month of March, a total of 1.4 million doses are scheduled to be delivered, and the respective figure for April is 3.3 million to 3.4 million doses.

For the first six months of this year, Sweden has signed up for 15 million vaccine doses. For the second half of 2021, this increases to 30 million.

At the press conference, the government also presented a plan to increase the budget for vaccine purchases from 4.5 billion Swedish krona to 11 billion Swedish krona.

By Wednesday, 13,088 individuals had been confirmed dead from coronavirus in Sweden since the pandemic started. This was 46 more than on Tuesday. The number of reported infections had increased by nearly 6,000 to 702,000.