By: ChandrashekarRana
By Chandrashekar Bhat
SRI LANKA on Monday (5) received its first batch of 26,000 doses of Pfizer vaccine, becoming the first south Asian country to get the US-made Covid-19 jab.
The consignment was part of 8,00,000 doses of vaccine to be delivered to the island nation in the next few weeks.
“Great news this morning as #SriLanka becomes the first country in South Asia to purchase a contingent of #Pfizer vaccines. I am proud of the work that is being done by my government to ensure vaccines for all Sri Lankans. Vaccination continues throughout the country,” president Gotabaya Rajapaksa tweeted.
A total of five million doses of vaccine financed through the World Bank’s Sri Lanka Covid-19 Emergency Response and Health System Preparedness Project will be supplied by December 2021, the World Bank said in a statement.
The vaccines are procured through a procedure established in the loan agreement signed with Sri Lanka in May 2021, it said.
Sri Lanka has so far used AstraZeneca manufactured by the Serum Institute of India, Chinese Sinopharm and Russian Sputnik V in the country’s fight against the Covid-19 pandemic.
Some 2.9 million of the island’s 20 million population received their first jabs by Monday (5) with 1.23 million receiving both doses.
According to Johns Hopkins University data, the country has reported 265,630 Covid-19 cases and 3,236 deaths so far.
