1.2 million Sinopharm vaccines arrived in Tripoli today with 800,000 Sinopharm doses expected tomorrow and another 500,000 of Pfizer and Astra-Zeneca expected soon

By Sami Zaptia.

London, 2 August 2021:

1.2 million doses of the Chinese-made Sinopharm anti-Coronavirus vaccines arrived by plane at Mitiga airport today. Another 800,000 of the same brand are expected tomorrow to complete the 2 million dose shipment, the Libyan government said.

This was the largest single delivery of any brand of vaccines to arrive in Libya since the first consignment arrived in April.

Public urged to get vaccinated

Making a press statement from under the unloading cargo plane, Prime Minister Abd Alhamid Aldabaiba and his Health Minister Ali Zanati urged people to go and get vaccinated at over 430 nationwide vaccination centres in order to mitigate the pandemic and as a national duty.

Another 500,000 doses arriving

They also confirmed that another 500,000 doses of other branded vaccines (250,000 each of Pfizer and of Astra Zeneca) were also expected soon. They stressed that it was not easy obtaining these volumes of doses and that much hard work had gone on in order to obtain them.

Lockdown effect

Health Minister Zanati said that the Coronavirus infection rate in Libya had dropped from 68 percent to 24 percent over the last three days – thanks to the partial lockdown announced last week.

Vaccination drive to be launched

He said that the vaccine was the only weapon to beat the Coronavirus and that the government was going to launch vaccines drives in a number of areas.

Vaccine arrivals on Libya

As mentioned earlier, this is by far the single largest consignment of anti-Coronavirus vaccines to arrive in Libya, and it is now the tenth to arrive since the first consignment (Sputnik V) arrived on 4 April. The largest consignment had previously been 500,000 doses of Sputnik V which had arrived on 19 July.

The arrival of today’s 1.2 million Sinovac doses brings the grand total of all the four brands to arrive (Sputnik V, Astra-Zeneca, Pfizer and Sinovac) to 2,481, 052.

Libya had announced it had ordered a total of 12 million doses for its population of 6.9 million people. The vaccine is available to non-national residents and illegal migrants too.

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