Malé, Maldives – The United States government on Saturday donated 100,620 additional doses of Pfizer vaccines to Maldives to fight COVID-19 in partnership with COVAX.
The donation of the Pfizer vaccine with its high efficacy rate will be utilized in the booster program allowing Maldivians to get an additional layer of protection against new Covid-19 variants.
This donation adds to the 439,920 doses of Pfizer BioNTech vaccines the United States donated to the Maldives throughout 2021 and in January 2022. The United States through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is also supporting the Maldives to safely distribute and deliver these vaccines across the atolls, train health workers and encourage people to get vaccinated safely and effectively.
“U.S. COVID 19 response efforts, including vaccination donations, reflect the true generosity of the American people. We are leveraging the ingenuity of American scientists and manufacturing with our logistics and global operations know-how to help vaccinate the world,” said Andrea Appell, Chargé d’Affaires for the U.S. Mission, Maldives.
Since the pandemic first broke out in March 2020, USAID has provided more than $7 million in COVID-19 assistance plus an in-kind donation of 60 ventilators to the Maldives. This assistance provided life-saving treatment, strengthened clinical care, mobilized critical supplies to strengthen the response, helped expand social protection services, and supported the development of effective economic, fiscal, and monetary measures in response to the pandemic.
Worldwide, the United States has pledged more than 1.2 billion vaccines and as of April 2022, delivered more than 533 million to 115 countries. The United States is also the largest donor to the global vaccine initiative, COVAX.
