Portugal will donate 40,000 doses of Pfizer-BionTech vaccines to Armenia under to a vaccine-sharing program launched by the European Commission on Monday, December 13, TSF Rádio Notícias reports.

At a press conference in Brussels, European Commissioner for Neighborhood and Enlargement Olivér Várhelyi and Polish Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau announced the program as "an act of solidarity" of the European Union (EU) with its Eastern partners – Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine.

The entire program is budgeted at €35 million, with the EU to cover all costs, from the acquisition of vaccines to their supply and administration.

According to the Armenian Ministry of health, 582 624 people, predominantly adults, have been fully vaccinated in the country. Armenia is currently using AstraZeneca, Sputnik-V, Moderna, SinoPharm and CoronaVac vaccines to inoculate people aged above 18. The vaccination program rolled out across the country in mid-April, with health authorities also setting up mobile vaccination facilities near shopping malls and on major streets in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia.