Egypt announced Saturday that it signed contracts to get 120 million doses of COVID-19 jabs, while the Health Ministry confirmed it will start inoculating with the locally produced Sinovac vaccine next month.
Meanwhile, the daily COVID-19 infection rate in the country has continued to decline. Egypt recorded 198 new coronavirus cases in the last 24 hours, upping the total number of confirmed cases since the outbreak in the country began to 281,772, the Health Ministry said.
According to the Ministry’s spokesman Khaled Megahed, 21 patients died from the virus, raising the death toll to 16,215. In addition, 666 patients were discharged from isolation hospitals after receiving necessary medical care, taking the number of recovered cases to 212,725.
Health Minister Hala Zayed said late on Friday that Egypt’s VACSERA has produced around 650,000 doses of China's Sinovac COVID-19 vaccine.
The vaccine will be ready to be administered in August.
According to the Health Minister, Egypt aims to vaccinate 40% of its population of just over 100 million by the end of 2021.
The Minister said that Egypt has not recorded Delta variant cases, but warned that the highly infectious variant could start circulating after it spread to many countries.
