More than a million Swiss fully vaccinated against Covid-19

The rate of vaccinations against Covid-19 is increasing in Switzerland. Keystone / Laurent Gillieron

The number of people in Switzerland who have been fully vaccinated against Covid-19 has topped the one million mark, the authorities said on Friday.

A total of 1,007,469 people have had two vaccine doses, corresponding to 11.7% of the population of 8.6 million. A similar number of people have had one jab.

Between April 29 and May 5, some 372,796 doses were administered in Switzerland at an average of 53,257 vaccinations per day. That’s an increase of 4% on the previous week.

Switzerland has been criticised for the slow start of its vaccination programme, including large discrepancies in the rate of vaccinations between cantons. The health regulator, Swissmedic, has taken more time than many other countries to approve vaccines and there have been delays in receiving some supplies.

The Swiss government has ordered nearly 36 million vaccine doses from five companies. Covid-19 vaccines from Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna are currently being administered as others still await regulatory approval.

On Thursday the government said it had ordered a further seven million doses from Moderna for 2022, with the option of another seven million.

“Switzerland has enough vaccine in 2021 to allow children and adolescents to be vaccinated too – provided the vaccines are authorised for this target group. It has also secured a sufficient number of vaccine doses for 2022 to offer the entire population a very high level of immunisation protection,” the government saidExternal link.

The rate of infections has fallen slightly in recent weeks, giving some cause for optimism. But the authorities said they would not relax their guard and have recently begun stepping up screening for the new Indian Covid-19 variant in Switzerland.