These positions were transmitted by António Costa at a press conference, at the end of the summit of heads of state and government on combating covid-19, which took place by videoconference.

Before the journalists, the Prime Minister reiterated the idea that vaccines against covid-19 “will be distributed according to a grid defined by the European Commission, taking into account the population of each Member State”.

“They will be distributed simultaneously in all Member States and under the same conditions”, reinforced the Prime Minister.

In the case of Portugal, according to António Costa, “for three of the vaccines, the doses to buy are already defined: in one 6.9 million; in another 4.6 million; and in the third, 4.5 million”.

“It is what is currently being defined according to the distribution scale that was defined according to the population of all Member States”, justified the Prime Minister.

At the summit of heads of state and government, according to the prime minister, “it was also established that the European Commission will develop the work so that there is a common information strategy on vaccination, so that there is confidence in citizenship Europe around the vaccine against covid-19 “.

A campaign that, according to the Portuguese Prime Minister, “aims to prevent false information and counter-information campaigns – campaigns that are known to be being prepared against the vaccination program”.

Regarding the vaccination program, António Costa said that the European Commission confirmed that it had already signed four contracts with multinational pharmaceutical companies, and that three more are still being negotiated.

“There is a joint work between the European and North American drug agencies in order to have a recognition and simultaneous approval of vaccines that are under development. The President of the European Commission, Ursula Von der Leyen, informed that there is an optimistic idea from the Agency European Medically that, during December, it will be able to grant the first conditional authorizations for vaccines “, he added.