Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz and Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen will visit Israel in this week to discuss expanded cooperation on coronavirus vaccines, Kurtz announced on Twitter on Saturday.
With the vaccines against COVID-19 now in use, life will return to normal in summer, Kurz said, and new mutations may require new inoculations and treatments.
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Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
(Photo: Ohad Zwigenberg)
"The aim must be to adapt the existing vaccines and treatments as quickly as possible or to produce new ones as quickly as possible - and to do so independently," he said in a post in German, adding that Austria has been working on its own capacities for research and production.
The chancellor said that since spring, Israel, Austria and Denmark have been maintaining close contacts on fighting COVID-19 - and would now move their cooperation further.
To this end, the two leaders will visit Israel and meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on March 4, Kurz said.
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Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen speaks during a news conference in Copenhagen on the coronavirus situation, Feb. 2021
(Photo: Reuters)
The three nations will work together on research and development, as well as production, of vaccines and treatments against COVID-19.
The first priority is to "accelerate the production and procurement of vaccines for the future," the Austrian chancellor added.
Israel has won global praise for its swift rollout of its "back to life" coronavirus vaccine campaign. As of Sunday, exactly half of the entire 9 million population had received the first dose of the two-dose vaccine and 35% had received the second dose.
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A 16-year-old Israeli receives the coronavirus vaccine in Jerusalem
(Photo: Shalev Shalom)
Israeli research released last week, the first of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine to be independently reviewed, shows the shot is highly effective at preventing COVID-19, in a potential landmark moment for countries desperate to end lockdowns and reopen economies.
The study showed two doses of the Pfizer shot cut symptomatic COVID-19 cases by 94% across all age groups, and severe illnesses by nearly as much.
Reuters contributed to this report