Malé, Maldives – Health Protection Agency (HPA) of Maldives has announced that Pfizer vaccine will be given to a select group of people in Malé City from April 11, 2021 onward.
According to HPA, the 5,850 doses of Pfizer vaccines supplied to Maldives through COVAX Facility which is co-led by World Health Organization (WHO) will be administered to people who fall under the high risk category, such as those who are immunocompromised, or are taking long term medications. In addition to this people of old age would also be prioritized.
People considered as high risk include those who have performed an organ transplant, people who do dialysis on a regular basis, people who are doing chemotherapy or radiotherapy, people taking medicines which lower their immunity and those who take steroids on a long term basis which is more than 10mg per day for over a month.
In addition to these categories of people, people with diabetes, thalassemia major, people with sickle cell anemia, people with Down syndrome, people with lung disease such as cystic fibrosis and bronchiectasis and people with heart issues at birth would also be considered for the administration of Pfizer vaccine.
HPA had previously advised people who fall under these categories to get registered at https://tinyurl.com/j5jdehrz. Pfizer vaccine will be administered so that two doses will be administered with the 5,850 doses which the country had received.
Pfizer BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine was initially developed by the German company BioNTech and manufactured by American company Pfizer uses a new mRNA technology. It has been shown to be 95% effective in large-scale clinical trials.
