Thursday Nov 21, 2024
Thursday Nov 21, 2024
Monday, 23 August 2021 00:17 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
Both doses of a COVID-19 vaccine have been administered to 25% of the country’s total population and at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine has been administered to 55% of the total population, health officials yesterday said.
According to Acting Chief Epidemiologist Dr. Samitha Ginige, close to 100% of the country’s population over 30 has received one dose of a COIVD-19 vaccine and 48% has received both doses.
Explaining the progress made by Sri Lanka’s vaccination drive, Dr. Ginige said the country has received 19.5 million vaccine doses thus far. The country requires 23 million vaccine doses to vaccinate the total population over age 30, which is 11.5 million.
The Acting Chief Epidemiologist said the target is to administer both doses of a COVID-19 vaccine to all persons over the age of 30 by the first week of September. Vaccination of persons aged 18 to 30 is expected to begin mid-September. There are 3.2 million persons in this age group.
Dr. Ginige was optimistic about meeting these goals given the current progress, but said there was some vaccine hesitancy in the over 60 age group.
“This is a problematic situation in the country. We mainly expect two things through vaccination: To reduce the number of fatalities and to reduce the transmission of the disease,” he said, adding that 77% of COVID-19 fatalities are above age 60 and 65% to 70% of deaths are of persons with chronic illness.
Dr. Ginige went on to say that 91% of COVID-19 fatalities are of persons who have not received even a single vaccine dose while 8% are persons who have received only one dose of a vaccine.
At present, the first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine has been administered to 12,088,864 persons and the second dose has been administered to 5,620,254 persons. This includes the 120,449 persons vaccinated on Saturday.
The Epidemiology Unit states that the first dose of Sinopharm has been administered to 9,578,129 persons and the second dose of the vaccine has been administered to 4,400,417 persons. On Saturday, the first dose of the vaccine was administered to 12,196 persons and 45,184 persons received the second dose of Sinopharm on Saturday.
45 persons received the first dose of Moderna on Saturday and the second dose of the vaccine was administered to 57,608 persons. A total of 771,366 persons have received the first dose of the vaccine, of which 225,452 persons have received the second dose as well.
On Saturday, the first dose of AstraZeneca was administered to 2,602 persons and the second dose to 1,218 persons. In total, the first dose of the vaccine has been administered to 1,326,261 persons and the second dose to 876,276 persons.
17 persons received the first dose of Pfizer and 1,579 persons received the second dose of Pfizer on Saturday. The Epidemiology Unit states that the first dose of the vaccine has been administered to 254,020 persons and the second dose to 103,536 persons.
In addition to this, the first dose of Sputnik V has been administered to 159,088 persons and the second dose to 14,573 persons.
