Poland’s vaccine hesitancy appears to benefit Australia. 

The Federal Government claims Australia will receive an extra 1 million Pfizer vaccine doses from Poland.

“We have been in discussions with the Polish government now for several weeks, and we have secured an additional 1 million doses of Pfizer and they will start landing in Australia tonight,” Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Sunday. 

Poland has been looking to sell as many as 4 million doses in recent week, even though it is well behind many other EU countries in the effort to vaccinate its own population.

About 58 per cent of Polish residents over 18 years have received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine, while in Spain and France, by comparison, more than 84 per cent have received at least one dose.

“These doses are all from the Pfizer plant in Belgium, where all of our other Pfizer doses are coming from,” Mr Morrison said.

“And I particularly want to thank [Polish] Prime Minister Morawiecki, who I've had numerous discussions with over these last few weeks and been in regular contact. I want to thank him personally and his government for their support of Australia's COVID-19 response during this very challenging time.”

The announcement comes just a fortnight after a COVID-19 vaccination point in the Polish city of Zamość was set on fire. 

The incident, which followed other acts of aggression by opponents of vaccination in Poland, was condemned by the health minister, Adam Niedzielski, as an “act of terror”.

“We are seeing an escalation of extremely brutal and even thuggish behaviour of anti-vaccine groups,” said Jaroslaw Szymczyk, chief commander of the police in Poland, quoted by TVN24.

In late July, anti-vaxxers tried to force their way into a vaccination point in Grodzisk Mazowiecki wearing vests of an organisation pledging to “resist the lawlessness of the government and police”.

A series of protests have been held against COVID-19 restrictions and vaccines in the Polish city of Głogów. Participants have reportedly chanted against “sanitary segregation” and “vaccination coercion”, while also claiming that “Jews are behind the pandemic”.

Marek Nowak, a sociologist at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań,  says the pandemic has “intensified the formation of radical movements” and led “anti-vaccination movements to use terror to convince others to share their views”.