Marruecos prosigue con su intensa campaña de vacunación

The vaccination campaign in Morocco continues to accelerate every day. According to the latest reports on 19 October, more than 41 million people have received the COVID-19 vaccine. The Ministry of Health has reported that its population includes 23.3 million people who have only the first dose, and 21 million who have also received the second dose.

The Maghreb country continues to campaign well for the prevention of COVID-19, as the Kingdom has a number of partners, from other countries that manufacture vaccines, who have provided them with the necessary supplies to extend their plans. All this has been possible thanks to the "COVAX" initiative of the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Vaccine Alliance (GAVI), of which Morocco is a member and which has allowed all this development of shipments of shipments of doses to reach the North African country. Since 22 January, Morocco has received more than 61 million doses. The most commonly injected vaccine is Sinopharm, the Chinese vaccine, which has received 46.7 million doses, plus 5 million received in the territory on 10 October this year. The second most injected is AstraZeneca, with 8.7 million doses. In addition, 302,400 doses have also been received from Janssen. 

Morocco had to find other ways to immunise Moroccans, due to the UK's interruption of shipments as the Serum Institute of India (SII) itself had recommended not to send any more supplies because of the new Indian variant, Delta, which was taking its toll on the Asian country. As an option, the UK had to place orders with Pfizer Vaccine of the United States, so as not to stop its mission to reduce the risk of infection for everyone in the country. The last shipment of this type of vaccine was on 14 October, with a shipment of 270,000 doses, and since this option was requested, more than 5.8 million doses have arrived at Mohammed V airport in Casablanca.

Since 31 August, Morocco's plan has been to vaccinate the youngest children. To date, more than 2.8 million children have received one of the doses and more than 1 million have been fully vaccinated. Of these, 55 per cent have been inoculated with Pfizer, and the remaining 45 per cent with Sinopharm, which is why health authorities are satisfied with these figures.

In addition, it has become known that Russia has moved the factory where its vaccine, Sputnik V, was made from Algeria to Morocco. Although relations between the two countries have not been going well recently, Vladimir Putin's country has decided to opt for the Kingdom to export its vaccine to Africa, having reached an agreement with a Moroccan pharmaceutical factory. Raazim Tsinamedz, Morocco's trade representative in Moscow, broke the news saying that "Morocco's geographical location allows sub-Saharan African countries access to inoculation". The change of country is due to the fact that production in Algeria was not sufficient to meet Russia's demands, and that Lofti Ben Ahmed, Algeria's Minister of Pharmaceutical Industries, had confirmed that the Sinovac and Sputnik vaccines were scheduled to be produced as of this September, but this has not been fulfilled.