Mozambique today received 720,000 doses of the Covishield vaccine against the new coronavirus, donated under the Covax mechanism, it was announced today.
The new batch received today is part of a total of 17.8 million doses expected in the country, under the Covax initiative (mechanism promoted by the World Health Organization to ensure equitable distribution of vaccines), said the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef), in a statement sent to the media.
The Mozambican Health Ministry also received 14,245 N95 masks and 11,400 gloves donated by state company Electricidade de Moçambique (EDM), as well as another 20,000 reusable masks handed over by Good Neighbors, an international non-governmental organisation founded in South Korea.
According to the latest figures provided by Mozambican head of state, Filipe Nyusi, 7.8 million people have been immunised with at least one dose of the vaccine against the new coronavirus in the country, of which 5.4 percent are fully vaccinated.
On Monday, Nyusi warned of the “gigantic and worrying evolution” of the weekly positivity rate in the country, which has risen from 0.4 percent to 24.5 percent in the last four weeks and noted that depending on the evolution of the data “more drastic measures” could be taken.
The President has suspended curfews for the Christmas and New Year holidays, while maintaining most of the restrictions related to the prevention of covid-19 in the country.
Mozambique has a cumulative total of 1,957 deaths and 162,525 cases, of which 150,517 have been recovered.
The covid-19 has caused more than 5.35 million deaths worldwide since the start of the pandemic, according to the most recent assessment by the agency France-Presse.
The respiratory disease is caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, detected in late 2019 in Wuhan, a city in central China, and currently with variants identified in several countries.
A new variant, Omicron, classified as worrying by the World Health Organization (WHO), was detected in southern Africa, but since South African health authorities gave the alert on November 24, infections have been reported in at least 89 countries on all continents, including Portugal.
