ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Iraq received a new batch of the Pfizer vaccine, the country’s health ministry announced on Sunday, adding that the doses will be dispatched to health facilities, including in the Kurdistan Region.
According to the statement shared on the health ministry's Facebook page, one million doses arrived to Iraq on Saturday, and the state owned general company for the marketing of medicine and medical supplies has confirmed that the vaccines have been sent to vaccination centers across the country, including the Region.
An official from the Kurdistan Regional Government's (KRG) health ministry also confirmed to Rudaw that the Region will be receiving a good portion of the recent shipment.
“The Kurdistan Region’s share of any vaccine shipment to Iraq is 13 percent majority of the time,” Aram Rostam, a senior advisor to the minister of health told Rudaw on Sunday, noting that population rate and amount of vaccine rollout often determine the amount sent to each province.
The new batch of vaccine come as Iraq received almost three million extra doses of the Pfizer vaccine through the World Health Organization (WHO)-led COVAX vaccine scheme late November.
The Iraqi health ministry in November announced that it was to administer a third dose of the COVID-19 vaccine to high-risk groups that include the elderly, health workers and people with chronic diseases.
Over 8.5 million people have been vaccinated in Iraq, according to the health ministry's latest data; just over a third of the country’s estimated 23 million adults.
Coronavirus infections in Iraq and the Kurdistan Region soared over the summer during a surge in the Delta variant. Both areas registered high numbers of infections and deaths.
However, although the new Omicron variant is taking over the contagious Delta variant globally, Iraq and the Region have not reported any cases of the latest variant.
To date, Iraq has recorded 2,094,097 cases and 24,167 deaths since the start of the pandemic, including the Kurdistan Region.
Additional reporting by Hemin Baban
