Ethiopia Receives the First AstraZeneca Covid-19 Vaccine

Today at Bole International, Ethiopian Airlines supplied the AstraZeneca vaccines licensed and produced by Serum Institute of India (SII). Ethiopia received 2.2 million AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines allocated by the COVAX Facility in marking the start of the country’s COVID-19 vaccination campaign. 

The supply of COVID-19 vaccines for Ethiopia is part of the first wave of arrivals, which will continue in the coming weeks. The WHO Representative Dr. Boureima Hama Sambo, UNICEF Representative Adele Khodr and the development partners were presented to Health Minister Dr. Lia Tadesse, along with other senior government officials. 

On this occasion, Lia commended the COVAX Facility and the vaccine producers. “There is now a guarantee of protecting our people and of a hope we could confront the pandemic by using cascading and equitable population vaccination together with other measures of public health,” she said. “This seems to us unattainable a few months ago. She also said that “Ethiopia is proud to have contributed to the African Region’s global effort.” 

In response to COVID-19, WHO representative in Ethiopia, Dr Boureima Hama Sambo, the arrival of the vaccines in Addis Abeba is a major milestone, a turning point in tides. WHO will continue working with the Ethiopian Government and global partners to ensure adequate amounts of COVID-19 vaccine are received, deployed and administered by Ethiopia, he added. 

The vaccines were produced within one year of the declaration of an emergency of public health international concern (PHEIC) by the Director General of WHO, the new outbreak coronavirus (COVID-19). COVAX is part of the COVID-19 Accelerator Tools (ACT), a ground-breakthrough international collaboration to speed up COVID-19 testing, treatment, and vaccines development, production, and fair access.

Data source: ENA