Egypt receives 2nd Moderna shipment comprising 3.5M doses

CAIRO – 5 November 2021: Egypt received its second shipment of the American-made Moderna vaccine, comprising more than 3.5 million doses on Friday.

The doses, delivered less than a week from the first Moderna shipment, arrived at the Cairo International Airport through the COVAX initiative and in cooperation with the Vaccine Alliance (Gavi).

“This comes as per the state’s plan to diversify and expand the provision of coronavirus vaccines to preserve the country’s gains regarding facing the pandemic,” a statement by the Health Ministry read.

The Moderna vaccine, approved for emergency use by the World Health Organization, is administered as two doses, 21 days apart.

 

Egypt received late in October its first shipment of the Moderna vaccine comprising 784,280 doses.

Egypt has started its vaccination campaign in January this year, during which around 25 million citizens have been vaccinated against the novel virus.

The country has received all types of vaccines worldwide, the latest of which was Moderna, Pfizer, and Johnson & Johnson.

Minister of Higher Education and Acting Health Minister Khaled Abdel-Ghaffar told a Cabinet meeting late in October that the country has received 72 million coronavirus vaccine doses and is expected to receive 26 million others soon.

The country has also allowed the vaccination of children who are above 15 years of age to receive the vaccine.