China and Norway donated more than 586,000 doses of Covid-19 vaccines to Uganda, supporting the African nation's inoculation as the country battles a surge in infections arising from the delta variant.
East Africa's third-biggest economy got 300,000 doses of Sinovac Biotech Ltd. vaccine from China and 286,080 AstraZeneca Plc dosages from Norway, the Kampala-based Ministry of Health said on its Twitter account.
Uganda, fighting a second wave of the virus, has administered only around 1.14 million doses out of its population of about 43 million people. It plans to vaccinate at least half the population before fully lifting restrictions imposed to control the spread of the disease.
Many lower-income countries are reliant on Covax, a program set up last year to equitably distribute vaccines to every corner of the planet. But the initiative has delivered just 140 million doses of the 1.8 billion it aims to ship by early 2022, hurt by delays in supplies from India. Covax said Friday that the first deliveries from a pledge of 5 million doses to be donated by Norway arrived in Uganda and Nicaragua.
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Uganda in March received a donation of 864,000 AstraZeneca doses manufactured by the Serum Institute of India. It has ordered 2 million doses from Johnson & Johnson and deliveries are expected to begin in August. A shipment of 647,000 Pfizer Inc. vaccine doses are expected to arrive in September, the country's President Yoweri Museveni said Friday.
The total number of coronavirus infections reported in Uganda has doubled since the end of May to about 94,000, driven by the spread of the delta variant, according to the country's Ministry of Health.
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