The Egyptian government confirmed on Sunday it has reserved 100 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine as the Arab country tries to speed up its vaccination campaign.
This includes 40 million doses of AstraZeneca, and 20 million doses of the Russian R-Pharm vaccine.
Earlier, Egypt received 300,000 vaccine doses developed by China National Pharmaceutical Group (Sinopharm). It was the third shipment from China of the Sinopharm vaccine which raised the total doses delivered to the country to 650,000 since December.
Some 600,000 of those were a gift from Beijing and the rest were sent by the UAE. The North African country also got 50,000 doses of a vaccine developed by AstraZeneca in February.
Egypt began vaccinating frontline medical staff against COVID-19 on Jan. 24 and expanded its vaccination rollout to include the elderly and people with chronic diseases on March 4.
Notably, clinical trials are about to start on Egypt’s first locally developed COVID-19 vaccine (Covi Vax) after the jab got regulatory approval. The vaccine is based on inactivated vaccine technology also used in the Sinopharm vaccine.
Egypt has also increased the number of COVID-19 vaccination centers nationwide to 138.
On Sunday, the country reported 683 new coronavirus cases, bringing the country’s total number of infections to 199,364.
The Health Ministry also reported 41 deaths in the past 24 hours, noting that the total number of COVID-19-related deaths has now reached 11,845 nationwide.
