UK Donates Nearly 300,000 Doses of Covid Vaccine to Egypt

UK donates nearly 300,000 doses of COVID vaccine to Egypt

CAIRO (Reuters) – Britain donated 299,700 doses of Oxford-AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine to Egypt, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday.

The shots were shipped via the global COVAX initiative, with the support of UNICEF and WHO, and arrived in Cairo on Monday, a statement added.

The shipment was part of a first tranche of the 100 million vaccines that British Prime Minister Boris Johnson pledged at a G7 summit that the UK would share with other countries in need by June 2022.

The new doses came days after Egypt received about 1.7 million AstraZeneca shots through COVAX.

Egypt has also received Sputnik, Sinopharm, Sinovac and Johnson & Johnson shots. It recently began locally producing Sinovac’s COVID-19 vaccines.

The government said in June it aims to vaccinate 40% of Egypt’s 100 million population by the end of this year.

Egypt is working to increase the vaccination rate to reach 800,000 people per day “during the coming period”, the cabinet said in on Monday.

(Reporting by Aidan Lewis; writing by Mahmoud Mourad; editing by Giles Elgood)