Photo/Somali Times
Somali Minister of Health of the Federal Government of Somalia Dr. Fowsio Abikar Nur became the first person to receive the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine delivered to Somalia yesterday.
The minister became the first person to receive the AstraZeneca vaccine, the first person in Somalia, and this is said to encourage the use of the vaccine for Somali people when some European countries stopped using the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine.
According to a Associated Press report in Sweden on Tuesday became the latest country to pause use of AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine as European regulators review safety data following reports of dangerous blood clots in some recipients. The company and international regulators continue to say the vaccine is safe, however, many countries elsewhere in the world are forging ahead with their vaccination campaigns.
President Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo also received the vaccine, raising concerns about the Covid-19 vaccine as more than 10 countries around the world have banned it.
The Covid-19 vaccine, developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University, was delivered at Mogadishu’s Aden Adde International Airport yesterday, reaching 300000 Oxford-AstraZeneca strains to reach 20 percent of Somalia’s population.
The vaccine will be given to health workers in hospitals, the police, the elderly and people suffering from various ailments.
Somalia is one of the countries benefiting from the UN-led Covax program, which aims to deliver Covid-19 vaccines to poor countries.