Egypt launched its long-awaited mass vaccinations against COVID-19 on Thursday, starting with the elderly, weeks after the populous country started inoculating medical workers.
Nearly 153,000 people have applied to receive the vaccines since Sunday, when the government allowed registration online for the elderly and patients with chronic diseases, Health Minister Hala Zayed said.
Egypt has set up 40 inoculation centres nationwide for the public, the government said in a statement.
Zayed said that according to the statement the number of such facilities will increase as Egypt receives more batches of vaccines.
“Work is under way to increase the numbers of citizens who will receive shots of different vaccines,’’ Madbouli said without giving specific figures.
A total of 400,000 doses of vaccines, mostly from China, have been delivered to Egypt since December, the online edition of the state-run newspaper al-Ahram reported.
The supplies include 50,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine.
In January, Egyptian authorities started giving the vaccine shots to front line medical staff.
Egypt, a country of more than 100 million people, has so far confirmed a total of 184,168 Coronavirus cases resulting in 10,822 deaths.
However, the real figures are believed to be far higher due to low official numbers of virus-detecting tests and unreported infections that have only been treated at home. (dpa/NAN)