Speaking about the strategy that will be adopted by Portugal in terms of vaccination against Covid-19, António Costa said that the Government awaits the decisions that will be taken by the Directorate General of Health and the European Medicines Authority (EMA) on the issue of the third dose.

“The Portuguese can rest assured: What is possible at this time to make any decision possible is done. In other words, the country has every margin of freedom to make the decision that is technically advisable to take”, he said.

He added that if the technical decision is to vaccinate, Portugal "has already contracted a number of vaccines to vaccinate the entire population with the third dose".

“For a majority of reasons, if the decision is only to vaccinate citizens over 65, we have these vaccines contracted. If this decision is not taken, Portugal will not destroy vaccines and will reinforce its international cooperation efforts, in particular with the countries of the Communities of Portuguese-speaking Countries”, he said.

António Costa then defended that, in international terms, Portugal “has been one of the countries that has contributed the most to the vaccination effort, not only through the bilateral cooperation mechanism Covax, but also in cooperation within the CPLP framework and with Andorra”.

"As we committed, we ensured the supply of Andorra with vaccination proportional to the Portuguese population in that principality," he added.