ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — Iraq has received 336,000 doses of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, the Ministry of Health announced on Thursday afternoon.
According to the ministry, the doses arrived through the COVAX initiative, designed to provide equitable access to vaccines across the globe, and will be distributed to all health facilities “fairly and freely.”
The arrival of the AstraZeneca doses, although later than scheduled, marks the first large-scale delivery to Iraq, and comes at a crucial time with the number of cases continuing to skyrocket. Iraq on Thursday announced a record total of 6,513 new cases in 24 hours.
Priority will be given to retired Ministry of Health workers and university professors working in health institutions, minister Hassan al-Tamimi said.
The doses were due in Iraq at the end of February but arrived late due to production delays and vaccine shortages, read a joint statement received by Rudaw English from UNICEF and the World Health Organization (WHO) on Thursday evening.
The vaccine doses will be immediately dispatched to health facilities in Baghdad, federal Iraq and also to the Kurdistan Region, the statement quoted health minister Hassan al-Tamimi as saying.
Iraq has previously received 50,000 doses of the Chinese-made Sinopharm vaccine, and is due to also receive Russian-made Sputnik vaccine in the coming weeks. Five thousand of the Sinopharm doses were gifted to the Kurdistan Region from China, with priority given to health workers on the frontlines of the fight against the virus.
The health ministry has also signed a deal with Pfizer for 1.5 million doses of its vaccine.
Baghdad is expected to receive a total of 16 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines, confirmed on Thursday by Tamimi.
"Further consignments of 1.1 Million COVAX vaccine doses are planned for Iraq in the coming weeks and will continue to cover 20 per cent of the population before the end of 2021," said WHO and UNICEF.
Some European countries have suspended use of the Oxford-developed AstraZeneca vaccine over blood clot fears. WHO and European regulators have said there is no evidence the vaccine causes adverse effects.
The minister emphasised the vaccine’s safety in a Thursday press conference, “assuring citizens that the vaccine is safe, effective and approved by WHO.”
The ministry has now launched an online portal for vaccine registration, available in Arabic and Kurdish, but vaccine skepticism is an ongoing battle for authorities in both the Kurdistan Region and federal Iraq.
Updated at 6:48pm
