A consignment of 728,460 doses of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines through the COVAX Facility are expected on Saturday, the Health Ministry yesterday stated.

The vaccines will be sent by Japan and will meet the shortage of doses the country is facing in administering the second dose to 539,357 persons. In total the first dose of the vaccine has been administered to 925,242 persons, but only 385,885 persons have received the second dose. The remaining AstraZeneca doses will be used for vaccination in the Kegalle District.

Sri Lanka will receive a total of 1.47 million doses of AstraZeneca from Japan through the COVAX Facility.

Meanwhile, the Chinese Embassy in Sri Lanka yesterday tweeted that Sri Lanka is set to receive four million doses of the Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccine in the first week of August. These are vaccine doses purchased by Sri Lanka.

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