The procurement of booster shots is important to ensure that European countries are not caught off guard, Deputy Prime Minister and Health Minister Chris Fearne told Politico.

"We need to make sure that we have the arrangements in place."

A booster shot might be needed to defend citizens from testing positive for new variants of Covid-19, which might still reinfect people as they dodge immunity generated either from previous Covid-19 infection, or from the vaccinations themselves.

Up till now, the most worrying strain is the South African variant, with preliminary studies on the efficacy of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine showing that it could be providing as low as 10% protection against the South African strain. In fact, South Africa has halted vaccinating with the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine for now. Meanwhile, the company is working on tweaking the vaccine in order to fight this variant.

Fearne was one of the earliest voices to push to have joint procurement of Covid-19 vaccines between the EU states - enabling more transparency, better prices, and distribution for all European countries. "We negotiated jointly; we set prices jointly; and got some very good prices," he told Politico.

Fearne pointed out that the initial "mega stubling block" which triggered him to propose this joint procurement was a lack of trust between European members as they didn't know "first-hand what other countries are paying", but now all the 27 EU countries benefit.

"European member states have managed to come together, put aside narrow-minded nationalism, and really acted as a union when it came to the procurement of vaccines," Fearne told Politico. "All the European Union citizens now have access to the vaccines in an equal fashion. All. Not some ... This is going to be in history, one of the great moments of the European Union."