Mozambique: Nampula marks 10 years of the Laudato Si
File photo: Lusa
Mozambique plans to start vaccination against Covid-19 from July this year, having already identified the priority groups for its national campaign, its minister of health has announced.
“The vaccine is expected to arrive in Mozambique between the months of May and June, which means that as of July or the end of June, in a more optimistic scenario, we would begin to vaccinate,” the minister, Armindo Tiago, said in an interview with public Radio Mozambique.
He said that the government had already defined the priority groups, though he did not give details. He also warned that the vaccine “should not be seen as something that will solve all the problems” and that it was “complementary” to existing measures.
Mozambique hopes to receive the vaccine through the Covax vaccination programme launched by the World Health Organisation, which plans to distribute at least 2 billion doses by the end of 2021 to immunise 20% of the most vulnerable people in 91 poor countries, mainly in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
“This initiative will allow us to have a safe vaccine, pre-qualified by the WHO and which can reach the country free of charge,” Tiago explained.
According to the minister, the country expects to receive around 6 million doses, which would cover 20% of the population.
“We have already submitted a technical assistance plan and also the so-called application for access to the vaccine, in which we have specified the priority groups, that is, those who will be the first to be immunised,” he said.
Since the announcement of the first case of the new coronavirus on 22 March, Mozambique has recorded a total of 19,309 confirmed cases, of which 86% have since recovered. The country has had 169 deaths associated with Covid-19.
In Africa as a whole there have been 66,145 such deaths out of the 2.7 million confirmed cases in 55 countries, according to the latest pandemic statistics for the continent.
Among Portuguese-language countries, Mozambique is second in terms of deaths and cases, after Angola with 408 deaths and 17,642 cases. They are followed by Cabo Verde (113 deaths and 11,920 cases), Equatorial Guinea (86 deaths and 5,264 cases), Guinea-Bissau (45 deaths and 2,446 cases) and Sao Tome and Principe (17 deaths and 1,014 cases).
Brazil is the Portuguese-language country worst affected by the pandemic and one of the world’s hardest hit, second only to the US in terms of number of deaths, at 196,018 out of more than 7.7 million cases.
Worldwide, the pandemic has claimed at least 1,835,824 lives out of the more than 84.5 million cases of infection.
Comunicamos os dados oficiais da situação epidemiológica da COVID-19 em Moçambique, relativos ao dia de hoje, 3 de…
Publicado por Ministério da Saúde – MISAU em Domingo, 3 de janeiro de 2021
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