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Tuesday, 27 July 2021 03:08 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
A donation of 1.6 million doses of the Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccine and 1.6 million syringes from the Government of China reached the island this morning.
In March, China donated 600,000 vaccine doses to Sri Lanka and, in May, donated a further 500,000 doses of Sinopharm. In addition to the donations, Sri Lanka has purchased 8 million doses of Sinopharm.
A batch of 90,000 doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine yesterday arrived in the country with Sri Lanka having thus far received 212,200 doses of the vaccine.
Four batches of Pfizer COVID-19 vaccines have reached the island thus far, with two batches of 26,000 vaccine doses during the first two weeks of July and a batch of 70,200 vaccine doses arriving a week ago.
The first dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine had been administered to 113,967 persons.
On Sunday, 320,272 COVID-19 vaccine doses were administered, of which 271,402 were the Sinopharm first dose and 11,485 were the Sinopharm second dose. According to the Epidemiology Unit, 5,565,424 persons had received the first dose of Sinopharm and 1,406,224 persons had received the second dose of Sinopharm.
The first dose of Moderna was administered to 37,385 persons on Sunday and a total of 670,583 Moderna first doses have been administered in the country.
In addition to the above vaccines, the Sputnik V and AstraZeneca vaccines had also been administered as part of the country’s COVID-19 immunisation program. According to the Epidemiology Unit, 925,242 persons had received the first dose of AstraZeneca and 385,885 persons had received the second dose of AstraZeneca.
The first dose of Sputnik V has been administered to 159,081 persons and the second dose to 14,503 persons.
In total, the first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine has been administered to 7,434,297 persons and the second dose to 1,806,612 persons.
Meanwhile, Education Minister Prof. G.L. Peiris yesterday said that 77% of the country’s academic staff had been vaccinated.