Mozambique: Manhiça Research Centre to test new vaccine against tuberculosis
Photo: Lusa
Mozambique is to receive over 1.5 million doses of vaccine against Covid-19 in July, making it possible to speed up the country’s vaccination programme, its minister of health, Armindo Tiago, said on Wednesday.
“It is with great pleasure that we announce that in the coming weeks the country will receive over 1.5 million doses of vaccine, which are being acquired by the Mozambican government,” Tiago said during a ceremony to receive 500,000 doses of vaccine acquired by the private sector – of which 139 were donated to the ministry itself.
Without specifying which brand of vaccine the new doses would be, the minister said that they would speed up implementation of the country’s plan to inoculate 17 million people.
“The government will continue its efforts to mobilise more vaccines in order to accelerate the vaccination plan against Covid-19,” he said.
Tiago also announced that there was a possibility that in August the country would receive a further 9 million doses, acquired by the government through an African Union mechanism.
In March, Mozambique received an initial donation of 200,000 doses of vaccines from China, which was followed by a further 100,000 doses from India and 384,000 from COVAX, an initiative of the World Health Organization (WHO) to provide doses to poor countries.
The government’s aim is to inoculate all adults – around 16 million people and a little over half the country’s population, by next year.
The country has seen an increase in the number of cases, deaths and hospitalisations this month, after a slowdown in infections between March and May.
The current worsening of the situation is worrying the health authorities, who last week announced that the more contagious Delta variant of the coronavirus, originally identified in India, was circulating in the country.
Mozambique had, by Tuesday, 872 deaths associated with Covid-19 and a cumulative 75,828 cases of the novel coronavirus that causes it, of which 93% are deemed to have recovered and 176 are currently in hospital.
Worldwide, the pandemic has caused at least 3,940,888 deaths, resulting from more than 181.7 million cases of infection, according to an assessment by France’s AFP news agency.
The respiratory disease is caused by the new coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, detected in late 2019 in Wuhan, a city in central China.
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