Africa-Press – Mozambique. Mozambique today received another 158,000 Covid-19 vaccine doses, 50,000 of them from Portugal and 108,000 from France via the Covax mechanism, the Ministry of Health has announced.
The two batches were delivered separately via Maputo International Airport.
Portugal plans “in the short term” to send a second batch of vaccines to Mozambique, bringing the total to 100,000 doses.
The Portuguese donation stems from the country’s political commitment to make available to the Portuguese-speaking African Countries (PALOP) and Timor-Leste “at least 5% of the Covid-19 vaccines purchased by Portugal”, according to a government statement there.
With the vaccines arriving in Maputo today, the Mozambican Ministry of Health will have received a total of 981,000 vaccines.
The first donation of 200,000 doses of vaccines was made in March by China, followed by 100,000 doses from India and 384,000 via the Covax mechanism, a World Health Organization (WHO) initiative for distributing vaccines to poorer countries.
The Mozambican private sector has in the meantime purchased 500,000 vaccines for its workers, of which 139,000 were offered to the Ministry of Health. These reached the country on June 30.
The Mozambican government wants all adults – about 16 million people, and a little over half of the Mozambican population – to be vaccinated by 2022.
Mozambique has seen an increase in the number of cases, deaths and hospitalizations since June, after a slowdown between March and May. The country had, by Sunday, accumulated a total of 904 deaths from 80,151 Covid-19 cases, 89% of which were said to have recovered.
