China Donates 100,000 Sinovac Vaccines to Georgia
Georgia has received a batch of 100,000 Sinovac (CoronaVac) COVID-19 vaccines from China as humanitarian aid. The Hungarian authorities helped to deliver the shipment to Tbilisi International Airport on the night of April 29-30.
The Beijing-based biopharmaceutical company Sinovac is behind an inactivated CoronaVac vaccine. Used in 22 countries around the world, the China-made vaccine showed varied efficacy rates against the virus, with barely over 50% in Brazil, 65.3% in Indonesia, and 91.25% in Turkey.
The two-dose vaccine can be stored at a temperature of 2 to 8 degrees Celsius. The Georgian Health Ministry said the two doses should be injected with an interval of 21 days.
Georgia bought and received a batch of 100,000 doses of another Chinese-developed Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccine on April 3. The registration for the Sinopharm vaccine began on April 27 for all age groups, with inoculation expected to start in early May. The Health Ministry said earlier vaccination with Sinopharm would begin only after the vaccine receives the World Health Organization’s authorization, which has not happened to date.
The country began the COVID vaccination on March 15. 43,200 doses of British-Swedish AstraZeneca vaccine arrived in Georgia on March 13, while 29,250 doses of Pfizer/BioNTech followed on March 25.
Georgia’s health authorities are hoping to vaccinate over 60% of the 3.7 million population. But some six weeks into the vaccination with AstraZeneca and Pfizer/BioNTech, only 45,338 persons in total have received at least one jab as of today, that is around 1.2% of the public.
On April 30, the Georgian health authorities reported 1,476 new cases of COVID-19 and 791 more recoveries. The number of total confirmed cases in the country stands at 310,310, of which 290,767 recovered and 4,110 died. The number of active cases to date stands at 15,407.
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