Malé, Maldives – The Health Emergency Operation Center (HEOC) has cleared that the island nation is only receiving 100,000 syringes for administering the vaccines and not the Covid-19 vaccines.
HEOC has informed that the island nation will be receiving 100,000 syringes for administering vaccines through the WHO endorsed COVAX facility today, however, they mentioned that no vaccines are scheduled to receive on February 23rd.
The Minister of Health of Maldives Ahmed Naseem earlier revealed that the vaccine shipment to be received from World Health Organization (WHO), will arrive in mid February.
He further detailed that additional doses of the vaccine are to arrive within this month, specifying that, “The WHO vaccine will start arriving by 14th or 15th of this month. And the vaccines for which Maldives has made payments, will hopefully be here by March.”
However, Maldives has not yet received the shipment of the vaccine provided by WHO through the COVAX facility..
Currently the Maldives is working on vaccinating its entire eligible population against Covid-19, within the next six months in order to achieve herd immunity. To this end, 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.
As 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, 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.
