Lebanon inks final deal for 2.1m doses of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine

A health worker prepares the first dose of the CoronaVac vaccine against coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic after the vaccine was issued “Emergency Use Authorization” in at Ibni Sina Hospital Ankara, Turkey on January 15, 2021 [Halil Sağırkaya – Anadolu Agency]

Lebanon’s caretaker health minister signed a final deal on Sunday to secure 2.1 million doses of Pfizer-BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine as the country battles a steep rise in infections, Reuters reports.

The vaccines are expected to arrive in batches starting February, the ministry said in a statement.

The ministry is also cooperating with the private sector to secure 2 million vaccine doses from Astrazenca and Sinopharm, it added.

Lebanon is under a three-week lockdown that ends on Feb. 1 and a strict 24-hour curfew until Jan. 25 after lax measures over the Christmas and New Year’s holiday period led to a spike in cases.

In addition to these deals, Lebanon has also signed up for 2.7 million doses to be delivered through COVAX, the global scheme backed by the World Health Organization to provide vaccines to poorer countries.

READ: Pfizer delays January vaccine delivery to Bahrain

Unless otherwise stated in the article above, this work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. If the image(s) bear our credit, this license also applies to them. What does that mean? For other permissions, please contact us.