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(Adds details, other vaccine deals)
PRAGUE, March 3 (Reuters) - The Czech Republic has asked
China for deliveries of coronavirus vaccines made by China's
Sinopharm, the Czech president's spokesman said on Wednesday.
The central European country of 10.7 million has been one of
the world's worst-hit by the coronavirus pandemic, with
hospitals reporting full capacity and the death toll reaching
20,941 as of Tuesday.
President Milos Zeman, who has long lobbied for closer
relations with China and Russia, asked his Chinese counterpart
Xi Jinping for the supplies, acting upon request from Prime
Minister Andrej Babis, Zeman's spokesman said.
"According to a report from the Czech embassy in Beijing,
the Chinese side has decided to immediately meet this request,"
the spokesman said in a statement on the president's website.
A spokesman for Babis said he was not aware of the request
when asked by Reuters. Babis did not mention it at a government
news conference that closed just as the announcement was made.
Like other EU states hampered by delays in deliveries from
the three producers whose shots have been registered in the UE,
Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna and AstraZeneca, the Czech government
has sought to boost supplies.
It won an agreement for advance supply of 100,000 of extra
doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine from EU partners earlier on
Wednesday, on top of 100,000 from France offered last week, and
smaller amounts from Germany and Israel.
Babis has reversed himself several times on possibly using
Russia's Sputnik vaccine without approval by the European drug
regulator EMA.
The country's Health Ministry, authorized to grant an
exception for usage of unregistered vaccines, has insisted it
would not endorse any without EMA registration. A spokeswoman
said on Wednesday that policy remained unchanged.
In the EU, Hungary started administering the Sinopharm shot
last week, and Polish President Andrzej Duda has discussed
buying the shot with Xi, the PAP news agency reported on
Monday.
(Reporting by Jan Lopatka, additinoal reporting by Robert
Muller; Editing by David Gregorio)
