Mohamed VI se pone la primera vacuna contra la COVID y lanza campaña nacional

King Mohamed VI received yesterday at the Royal Palace in the city of Fez, in central Morocco, the first vaccine against the coronavirus in the country, and thus launched the national campaign against the pandemic. 

The official agency MAP, which reported the news, recalled that the aim is to vaccinate 80% of Moroccans and foreign residents in the country over 17 years of age, although it is not known how long the operation will last. 

A statement from the Royal Cabinet said on Wednesday that Morocco has the necessary quantities of vaccines to start the campaign after receiving in recent days batches of two million from AstraZeneca and half a million from Sinopharm of India and China, respectively, without knowing the dates of further deliveries. 
 

The priority populations for vaccination will be those over 75 years of age, medical and health personnel over 40 years of age, education personnel over 45 years of age, the military and "public authorities" of any age. 

It has not yet been clarified what the criteria for choosing one or the other vaccine will be, nor whether the Sinopharm batch comes from the Beijing laboratory (which has already passed phase 3 testing) or the Wuhan laboratory, about which there are more questions. 

They have also not provided information on the total cost of the campaign or the source of its funding. 

The vaccines were distributed to different regions of the country, where they were kept in cold storage until the order is given to begin injections at 2,880 fixed points (health centres, universities, prisons, workplaces) and 7,000 mobile points. 

To date, Morocco has had 468,383 confirmed cases of the virus and 8,207 deaths.