Rabat – Morocco will receive different varieties of COVID-19 vaccines soon, amounting to nearly 2.5 million doses.
Doctor Said Afif, a member of Morocco’s Scientific and Technical Committee of Vaccinations, confirmed the information on Moroccan news outlet 2M broadcast on Thursday, August 19.
Afif clarified that Morocco is expecting, on Saturday, August 21, a shipment of 800,000 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, and an additional shipment of 1 million doses of the Sinopharm vaccine. Morocco is also set to receive 650,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine next week, as part of the World Health Organization’s COVAX program, the doctor added.
The new batches of the vaccinations will help Morocco advance its national vaccination campaign to include young people aged 12 and over, Afif said. Additionally, the deliveries will broaden the nation’s vaccine supply, since it has primarily consisted of Chinese Sinopharm vaccines.
Morocco’s national vaccination campaign is steadily progressing, with the local health authorities, as of August 19, having administered the first dose of the vaccine to 17,156,411 Moroccan residents, and having fully vaccinated 12,699,602 people in the country.
Morocco already recently expanded the campaign to include anyone over the age of 18 starting on Monday, August 16.
Despite the progress, some experts in Morocco are warning of a deteriorating epidemiological situation – unless certain precautionary measures are enforced. For the Moroccan professor and former temporary WHO medical advisor Chakib Hossini Laraqui, a short lockdown would be appropriate.
“We must reconfine at least fifteen days minimum,” he told local news outlets, stressing that another flare up is likely to occur if the country does not show caution.
Morocco’s Ministry of Health has also expressed concern relating to the growing rate of intensive care unit’s occupancy, which is likely to lead to an “increase in the number of deaths,” according to an August 17 statement.
