Egypt’s Minister of Health denies rumors of suspension of AstraZeneca vaccination

CAIRO – 10 July 2021: Egypt Minister of Health Hala Zayed denied rumors claiming that the state stopped vaccinating people with AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines, said the ministry in a statement on Friday. 

 

She affirmed that the citizens are receiving their first and second jabs in all vaccination centers nationwide.

 

Early May, AstraZeneca announced that it has a shortage of engineers to share its technology with other vaccination manufacturers, the Independent reported.

 

Mid-June Spokesperson of the Ministry of Health and Population Khaled Megahed stated that Egypt should receive 1.9 million AstraZeneca doses through Covax. However, the shipment time was delayed.

 

“During the past few weeks, Egypt obtained more than 2 million doses of coronavirus vaccines, which were subjected to the necessary check and analysis by the Egyptian Medicines Authority,” the Minister added, noting that 610,000 doses were distributed to the vaccine centers at the beginning of next week.

 

Egypt will receive two million dozes of Pfizer coronavirus vaccine in the coming few days, announced Egyptian Minister of Health Hala Zayed in media remarks on Friday evening.

 

Shortly afterward, Egypt will receive other shipments of Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 Vaccine, besides shipments of the effective substance that needs for producing Sinovac COVID-19 vaccines, she told El Hikaya talk show on the MBC Masr channel.

 

The health “situation is safe in Egypt… we have reached the lowest level,” the minister said.

 

“We have not detected cases of the Delta coronavirus variant, but this does not mean that it will not come. The strain has entered more than 100 countries worldwide,” she continued.

 

Under directives of President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi,  Egypt has signed a contract to buy 20 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine against coronavirus, said Advisor to the President of the Republic for health and prevention affairs Mohamed Awad Taj El-Din in a press conference in the Presidential Palace on June 3, 2021.

 

The state plans to vaccinate 40 million citizens by the end of the year, representing around 40 percent of the population.

 

The Health Ministry said 127 new coronavirus cases were detected on Friday, upping the total number of confirmed cases since the outbreak in the country began to 282,864.

 

In a statement, the Ministry said 17 patients have died from the virus over the past 24 hours, raising the death toll to 16,368.

 

The number of recovered cases reached 217,324 so far, the ministry said.