Azernews.Az

By Ayya Lmahamad

A batch of COVID-19 vaccines has been delivered to Azerbaijan within the COVAX initiative.

Some 84,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine were delivered to Azerbaijan in this batch. Earlier, on March 30, Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization Chief Communications Officer Rosie Greaves in a videoconference meeting with Azerbaijan State Agency for Compulsory Health Insurance Board Chairman Zaur Aliyev noted that 84,000 doses of AstraZeneca vaccines will be delivered to Azerbaijan.

Moreover, Greaves added that some 218,790 doses of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines will be delivered to Azerbaijan within eight weeks.

A total of 432,000 doses of AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines are planned to be delivered to Azerbaijan by late May within the COVAX initiative.

Azerbaijan Deputy Health Minister Viktor Gasimov emphasized that the vaccines against COVID-19 were produced in South Korea.

“The sooner the vaccination against COVID-19 is carried out, the earlier the collective immunity will be formed, which will save the population from this trouble,” the deputy minister added.

Likewise, Gasimov noted that to date, more than 900,000 people have been vaccinated against COVID-19 in Azerbaijan.

Additionally, he stressed that Azerbaijan has one million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine in reserve. The deputy minister added that some 30,000-35,000 people are vaccinated against COVID-19 every day in Azerbaijan.

“The vaccination against COVID-19 has been launched in Azerbaijan since January 18. During this time, 600,000 people were vaccinated against COVID-19 with the first dose, while 300,000 people with the second dose,” he added.

Azerbaijan started vaccinating citizens using China’s Sinovac vaccines on January 18. Initially, the country ordered 4 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine.

The nationwide vaccination is free and on a voluntary basis and is in line with the “Strategy of vaccination against COVID-19 in Azerbaijan for 2021-2022”.

Azerbaijan confirmed its first COVID-19 case on February 28, 2020. The country introduced a special quarantine regime on March 25 and took a number of measures to fight COVID-19 in the country. Moreover, the government allocated $1.1bn from the 2020 budget to fight the coronavirus infection.

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Ayya Lmahamad is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @AyyaLmahamad

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