clear

Creating new perspectives since 2009

UK donates 300,000 covid vaccines to Egypt

August 17, 2021 at 4:23 pm

An Egyptian medical worker holds a bottle of the Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine (Covishield) on March 4, 2021 in Cairo on the first day of vaccination in Egypt. [KHALED DESOUKI/AFP via Getty Images]

Britain donated 299,700 doses of Oxford-AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine to Egypt, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said today, according to Reuters.

The shots were shipped via the global COVAX initiative, with the support of UNICEF and WHO, and arrived in Cairo yesterday, a statement added.

The shipment was part of a first tranche of the 100 million vaccines that British Prime Minister Boris Johnson pledged at a G7 summit that the UK would share with other countries in need by June 2022.

READ: Turkey has given over 83m coronavirus vaccine shots so far

The new doses came days after Egypt received about 1.7 million AstraZeneca shots through COVAX.

Egypt has also received Sputnik, Sinopharm, Sinovac and Johnson & Johnson shots. It recently began locally producing Sinovac’s coronavirus vaccines.

The government said in June it aims to vaccinate 40 per cent of Egypt’s 100 million population by the end of the year.

Egypt is working to increase the vaccination rate to reach 800,000 people per day “during the coming period”, the cabinet said yesterday.