The Arab Republic of Egypt has announced the start of a vaccination campaign against the novel coronavirus.
French news agency AFP quoted Egyptian Health Minister Hala Zayed today from one of the isolation hospitals in Ismailia as saying, "I announce the launch of the national vaccination campaign against COVID-19." The Egyptian minister clarified in a press conference the groups receiving the doses, starting with the medical staff facing the pandemic, followed by ordinary medical staff, then the elderly and those with chronic diseases, and finally ordinary citizens.
Zayed explained that Egypt has contracted for 40 million vaccine doses through the GAVI Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization, aiming to vaccinate the remaining medical staff within the first quarter of the year.
The agency reported that the director of Abu Khalifa Hospital in Ismailia and one of the nurses received the first two doses of the Sinopharm vaccine.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi announced on Saturday evening that the country would begin the vaccination campaign on Sunday using the Chinese vaccine, with the first shipment of the vaccine arriving in Egypt in December, including 50,000 doses.
It is worth noting that the Egyptian Unified Procurement Authority announced contracts with the manufacturers of the AstraZeneca and Oxford coronavirus vaccines to obtain 20 million doses.
Statistics have shown more than 160,000 infections with the novel coronavirus, including over 8,900 deaths.
The second group expected to receive the vaccine will be those with chronic diseases, by the end of January or early February at the latest.
Egyptian Presidential Advisor for Health Affairs Mohamed Awad Tag Eldin emphasized that Egypt "has not delayed in starting the vaccination campaign against COVID-19, as many countries in the world have not begun yet due to the limited quantities of vaccines available globally," stressing that once a sufficient number of these vaccines arrive in the country, vaccination campaigns will begin.
