Malé, Maldives – The Maldives – an island nation of just over 500,000 people – has secured enough Covid-19 vaccines to inoculate the entire population with in just weeks of launching the nation wide vaccination program against the virus.
On Saturday, Maldives announced the latest donation of Covid-19 vaccines received by the country, which is 100,000 doses of the Covishield vaccine donated by India. With this, India has donated a total of 200,000 vaccines to the Maldives, which is enough to vaccinate 100,000 individuals with two doeses of the vaccine, as required to be complete the immunization.
With this, Maldives has secured more than 1.1 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines, which is enough to inoculate the entire country’s living population, which according to the estimates of the National Bureau of Statistics of Maldives, is at 557,426.
Breakdown of Covid-19 vaccine doses secured by Maldives:
- 100,000 doses – Covishield (Donated by India)
- 100,000 doses – Pledged by China
- 5,000 doses – Sinopharm (Donated by China)
- 5,000 doses – Sinopharm (Donated by anonymous donor)
- 700,000 doses – AstraZeneca (Procured by Maldives)
- 100,000 doses – Covishield (Pledged by India)
- Doses enough for 20% of Maldivian population (111,485) – WHO co-led COVAX facility
Totaling up these figures, Maldives has secured a total of roughly 1,121,485 doses of Covid-19 vaccines, which if is requires two doses for full immunization, would vaccinate a total of 560,742 individuals in the country.
Currently the Maldives is working on vaccinating its entire eligible population against Covid-19, within the next six months. In order to achieve the goal, the country has launched the ‘Covid-19 Dhifaau’ campaign, which was launched on 1st February 2021, and is currently active across the entire country, having have seen the vaccination of more than 70,000 individuals with the first jab of the immunization.
Given that no Covid-19 vaccine has received the go-ahead to be administered to children and pregnant women, those who fall into this category are not receiving the vaccine as of now. However, authorities have stated that vaccines designed for children are in the making and may be available by the year end.
As of now, only the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine mass produced by the Serum Institute of India and marketed under the name Covishield, has been approved for use in the Maldives, with other vaccines such as the Chinese made Sinopharm, which Maldives has received, still in review.
With this Maldives could possibly become the first country to have vaccinated its entire eligible population, against Covid-19, making it one of the safest countries for visitors in the world.
