Northwestern Syria, dominated by jihadists and Syrian rebels, will receive its first doses today. vaccine against covid-19 of AstraZeneca under the Covax program, said a UN official, reports the RES.
About 53,800 doses of the vaccine are expected to reach the area, Idlib and its environs, according to Mahmoud Dacher, a World Health Organization official based in Gaziantep, a Turkish city near the Syrian border.
In a war-torn Syria, this is the first batch of vaccines to be received under the Covax program, which aims at equal access to covid-19 vaccines.
“Once the vaccines arrive, we are ready to start delivering them to the priority groups through our partners who have undertaken the implementation,” Dacher said.
Priority will be given to medical staff and frontline workers in the fight against covid-19. “Then adults 60 years and older and then those adults 18 to 59 years old suffer from chronic diseases,” he explained.
Nearly half of Idlib province is dominated by jihadists from Hayat Tahrir al-Sam, a former Syrian branch of al-Qaeda. There are also small pockets of Syrian rebels approaching Ankara near the Turkish border.
These areas will initially receive approximately 224,000 doses of covid-19 vaccine, the WHO said in late March.
“Our goal is to vaccinate 20% of the population by the end of 2021” throughout Syria, according to the same source.
Imad Zahran, spokesman for the Idlib health authorities, said the vaccination campaign would start in early May and last for three weeks.
About 4 million people live in northeastern Syria, according to the UN. More than 21,000 cases of covid-19 and 641 deaths have been reported in the area.
Local authorities had included their areas in the Covax program. Damascus, which is expected to receive 921,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine for Kurdish-controlled areas in northeastern Syria, has done the same.
Damascus began in early February the first vaccinations for about 2,500 health workers thanks to vaccines sent “from a friendly country”.
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