Uganda receives additional 700,000 doses of Sinovac vaccine from China

The minister of state for primary health care, Ms Margaret Muhanga said the additional 700,000 doses of the Sinovac vaccines received on Tuesday from the Chinese’s government will supplement previously deployed Sinovac vaccines to support the ongoing mass COVID-19 vaccination programme in order to fully open up the economy.

“The ministry will first release 300,000 doses of the newly received consignment to mainly target teachers who are supposed to receive the second dose while the remaining 400,000 doses will be split into two to act as 1st and 2nd dose,” she said.

Ms Muhanga made the comments on Tuesday after receiving the second batch of Sinovac vaccines directly from the Chinese Government at the National Medical Store (NMS) in Entebbe.

“To-date, Government of Uganda has received 6,631,763 doses of various COVID-19 vaccines. This points to the fact that government is committed to increasing access to vaccines in order to protect the population from this deadly disease,” she said.

“Of the doses received, so far 2,575,021 doses have been administered while 3,021,994 are currently being distributed countrywide. Of the administered doses, 1,974,045 have been administered as 1st dose and 600,976 have been administered as 2nd dose,” she added.

The Chinese ambassador to Uganda Mr Zhang Lizhong said that the donation is demonstration of 59 years of good bilateral relations between the two countries.

“During the recent 13^th BRICS Summit and the first meeting on the international forum on Covid- 19 vaccine cooperation, H.E President Xi Jinping stressed that China is committed to building a global community of health for all, that is providing vaccines to the world particularly fellow developing countries,” he said.

Mr Lizhong said China will provide a total of two billion doses of vaccines to the world.

“In addition to donating $100 million to the COVAX facility, china will donate 100 million doses of vaccines to other developing countries within the year to ensure vaccines accessibility and affordability in developing countries,” he said.

The Assistant Commissioner, Vaccines and Immunization (UNEP) Dr Alfred Driwale said the country is set to receive an additional 400,000 doses of the Johnson and Johnson vaccines on Tuesday evening to add to the 196,800 doses received  recently.

“We are now going to have 600,000 doses of Johnson and Johnson. We didn’t want to distribute it earlier, we knew about this pipeline, now we have enough stock. The distribution will begin next week,” he said.