Egypt kicked off its long-awaited Covid-19 vaccination campaign on Sunday, as the Arab world’s most populous country continues to record daily infections and deaths related to the virus.
The campaign gives priority to frontline medical staff, chest and fever hospitals nationwide, patients with chronic diseases and the elderly.
Medical staff at a hospital in Ismailia province were the first to receive doses of the vaccine, the Health Ministry’s spokesman Khaled Megahed said.
Footage on the spokesman’s Facebook page showed the hospital’s medical staff being given shots of the vaccine, with Health Minister Hala Zayed present.
The ministry says it is aiming to vaccinate around 207,000 medical staff at hospitals.
Egypt received its first shipment of the Chinese-made vaccine Sinopharm in December, and approved it for the emergency use earlier this month.
Egypt, with a population of more than 100 million, recorded 680 new infections of coronavirus on Saturday and 49 related deaths. The new figures bring the total numbers of infections to 161,143 and the the deaths to 8,902.
GNA
