Senegal received 200,000 doses of the Covid-19 vaccine from the Chinese laboratory Sinopharm on Wednesday, February 17, which should allow it to launch a vaccination campaign for people at risk by the end of February.
The cargo from China arrived in the evening on a plane from the national company Air Senegal, according to images on national television RTS.
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Present for his reception at Blaise Diagne International Airport, about fifty kilometers from Dakar, President Macky Sall promised the rapid start of vaccination.
"I appeal to all populations for full adherence to our strategy,"
he said, specifying that the vaccines had been acquired
"on the state's own budget"
.
The amount of the transaction has not been officially announced, but the government newspaper
Le Soleil
reported that it was 2.2 billion CFA francs (3.3 million euros).
The first beneficiaries of this campaign will be some 20,000 health personnel and those over 60 with co-morbidities, or about 3% of the 16 million Senegalese.
They will be followed by people with chronic diseases (3% of the population) and those over 60 without comorbidity (17%).
Sinopharm's vaccine, which claims to be 79 percent effective, has already been used in several African countries, including Seychelles, Zimbabwe, Egypt and Equatorial Guinea.
Read also: Covid-19: launch of the vaccination campaign in South Africa
If it starts its program as planned at the end of February, Senegal, where nearly 32,000 contaminations and 769 deaths have been recorded, will take the lead over its West African neighbors.
Mali plans to start operations in April.
In Guinea, only a few personalities, including President Alpha Condé, have so far received doses of the Russian vaccine Sputnik V as part of an experimental program.
Senegal should also receive, at a still unknown date, doses of the British vaccine AstraZeneca as part of the international Covax scheme, the aim of which is to provide enough doses to vaccinate up to 20% of the population of participating countries before the end of the year.
