The US donates 111,150 more doses of the Pfizer vaccine to Somalia

[Deeq A.]

Mogadishu (HOL) - The US Embassy in Mogadishu donated an additional 115,150 Pfizer COVID-19 vaccines to Somalia on Thursday as part of the COVAX global vaccine sharing program. In a press statement released Thursday, the embassy said that the donation came "with no strings attached" with the "singular objective of saving lives across Somalia." The US has promised worldwide distribution of 1.1 billion doses of the COVID-19 vaccine. More than 115 countries have received vaccination doses from the United States, totalling more than 575 million. "As President Biden has said, the United States is committed to bringing the same urgency to international vaccination efforts that we have demonstrated at home. We are sharing these vaccines to save lives and to lead the world in bringing an end to the pandemic." On March 15, 2021, one year after the first COVID-19 case was confirmed in Somalia, the first shipment of 300,000 COVID-19 vaccines from AstraZeneca, obtained through the COVAX, arrived in Mogadishu. The elderly, persons with chronic illnesses, and frontline workers, notably healthcare personnel, were the priority groups to get COVID-19 vaccines in the following months. Since then, Somalia has received hundreds of thousands of vaccines from the COVAX facility. Those deliveries include the Pfizer, AstraZeneca and Johnson and Johnson vaccines. China also donated over 200,000 doses of their Sinopharm vaccine in April 2021. Somalia has vaccinated about 10% of its total population. There have been 26,957 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Somalia since the onset of the pandemic, which resulted in 1,361 deaths.

Source: Hiiraan Online