As scientists around the world have scrambled to find a vaccine for COVID-19, Greece is set to get three million doses of a formula developed by the University of Oxford in collaboration with AstraZeneca if it passes a clinical trial.

Health minister Vassilis Kikilias said trials by the United Kingdom company have reached a third phase and a fourth is needed to see if the vaccine is effective and safe, with research and development on an unparalleled scale.

“At the end of December, January, February, March, May and June, if all goes well, Greece will receive in seven partial deliveries its allocation from the agreed vaccine,” he told broadcaster SKAI.

“We will start with 700,000 doses in December which will be a single or double dose, and around 3 million doses in total,” he added. He didn't say how it would be determined who has priority for the shots in a country of 11 million people.

The shot, called AZD1222 or ChAdOx1 nCoV-19, is a recombinant viral vector vaccine developed by Oxford University. It was licensed to AstraZeneca in April.