European Commission plans to convince skeptics to vaccinate in EU countries
21:58
As EURACTIV.com found out, the European Commission, in close cooperation with governments in Eastern and South-Eastern Europe, is currently preparing massive awareness-raising campaigns about the need to vaccinate against Covid-19. The reason is skepticism about vaccines, especially in Bulgaria and Romania.
The project is still at an early stage of implementation, but Brussels stresses its importance, given the significant differences between the level of vaccination of the inhabitants of countries in Eastern and Southeastern Europe and countries in the West of the continent.
According to the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), vaccination rates in the EU's eastern and south-eastern Member States remain well below the EU average (66.9 percent of fully vaccinated populations).
"We cannot go on like this. If Eastern Europe does not accelerate, we will never end the pandemic," a EURACTIV interlocutor emphasized.
Figures are particularly disappointing in countries like Bulgaria and Romania, where only 26.9 percent and 39 percent of people have been fully vaccinated, respectively.
