(Bloomberg) -- Sweden’s government has decided to join the European Union’s agreement to distribute a coronavirus vaccine via drugmaker AstraZeneca Plc.
“This will give Sweden access to the vaccine if it’s approved,” Prime Minister Stefan Lofven said at a press conference in Stockholm. “And with that we will be able to take an important step to secure a vaccine for Sweden.”
Sweden expects to get about 6 million doses based on the size of its population, and the country’s health agency has been granted a budget of 2 billion kronor ($229 million) to finance purchases of the vaccine, according to Lofven.
In recent weeks the Nordic country has seen the pace of infections converge with those of neighboring Denmark and Norway, despite a dramatic improvement in the number of Covid-19 deaths and cases throughout July.
“Large parts of the population are still very susceptible,” Karin Tegmark Wisell from the health agency said in a separate press conference earlier on Thursday. “We don’t fully know what it means to have had the infection.”
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