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Morocco is set to have at least 20 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines by the end of April, according to Samir Machour, a senior vice-president at Samsung Biologics.
Machour, whose influence helped Morocco secure COVID-19 vaccines, made the announcement earlier this month during an interview with Medi1TV.
“By the end of March, about 5 million more doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine will arrive from Europe, and there will be other shipments from Sinopharm between March and the end of April,” he said.
“This means that in one or one and a half months, we will have at least 20 million doses available in Morocco,” he added.
The country has so far received six million doses from AstraZeneca’s production unit in India, including two million that arrived on January 25 and four million on February 11.
China’s Sinopharm, meanwhile, has so far supplied Morocco with one million doses — 500,000 on January 27 and 500,000 on February 16.
The Moroccan Ministry of Health announced in late December 2020 that it had ordered 65 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines, without specifying the number of vaccines ordered from each of the pharmaceutical companies supplying the country — AstraZeneca and Sinopharm.
According to Machour, however, Morocco will receive a total of 25.5 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine from AstraZeneca, while the rest of the ordered vaccines will be supplied by Sinopharm.
Morocco aims to vaccinate at least 80% of its population in order to develop herd immunity against COVID-19.
As of February 25, Moroccan health authorities have vaccinated 3.16 million people, or 8.7% of the country’s total population.
