Senegal will its start its Covid-19 inoculation program this week after receiving a donation of 200,000 doses of the Sinopharm vaccine from China.
The West African nation plans to vaccinate about 100,000 healthcare and other frontline workers in the first round starting Wednesday, health ministry spokesman Mamadou Ndiaye said by phone from Dakar on Sunday. The elderly and those with chronic conditions will follow, Ndiaye said. The country aims to administer as many as 3.5 million inoculations in the first round.
More than 32,000 infections and over 4,900 deaths have been recorded in Senegal since the virus first appeared, the health ministry said in a statement published on its Twitter account Sunday. The country's population is about 17 million.
Senegal is also in talks with Russia and India, among others, to acquire additional doses of vaccine to achieve its goal of inoculating as much as 90% of the targeted 3.5 million people by the end of 2021. The country expects to receive 1.2 million doses of the AstraZeneca Plc vaccine through the Covax vaccine-sharing facility in the first week of March, Ndiaye said.
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