Over 50, 000 people to receive second dose of AstraZeneca vaccine

The Ministry of Health and the World Health Organisation (WHO) have revealed 51, 833 people are yet to receive their second dose of COVID-19.

“We are expecting to receive 60,000 AstraZeneca on the November 12, and that is mostly for those people who still want to get their second dose,” the WHO South Sudan COVID Incident Manager Sacha Bootsma told journalists on Sunday during the weekly media briefing on November 7.

South Sudan’s total number of people fully vaccinated is 60,964. That has now come to 0.44 per cent coverage of the total population in the country. This is still very low compared to other countries.

“When it comes to vaccination, we have almost 30 per cent of the people who have been vaccinated are female. So that is also slowly increasing at percentage,” Bootsma confirmed.

She said the number of health care workers in the country fully vaccinated is 33.4 per cent.

 Currently, the country is administering the Johnson and Johnson COVID-19 vaccine that the national ministry of health started on September 8, 2021.

“So far we have managed to vaccinate 27,958 people with Johnson and Johnson. We can see that out of the number of people who got J and J 38.7 per cent are women… the number of female coming for vaccination are increasing which is a big development.”

However, the country is expecting two batches of COVID-19, 60,000 of AstraZeneca vaccine and 168,000 doses of Johnson and Johnson on November 12, as donations from the United States government.

“We are also about to receive, but we are not sure yet when exactly 93,600 thousand dozes of Johnson and Johnson which is a donation from the European Union. So, we can see that more and more countries are starting to send in the vaccine as we continue to vaccine people,” Bootsma said.