According to a note from the Office of the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs and Cooperation, the vaccines are accompanied by materials to make their administration viable, such as syringes and needles, among others.
The products will be delivered to the Angolan health authorities by the Portuguese Embassy in Luanda.
The note confirms that this new support from Portugal follows the support of two others already sent to Angola on July 15 and August 19.
The note states that “with this third batch of vaccines, Portugal has already sent a total of 370,000 vaccines with the aim of supporting the Angolan authorities in putting their national plan for immunization against COVID-19 into practice.”
This donation, the document highlights, is part of the second phase of the action plan in the health response to the COVID-19 pandemic between Portugal, the Portuguese-speaking African countries (PALOP) and East Timor.
Portugal made a political commitment to make 5% of the vaccines against COVID-19 that the Portuguese state purchased for PALOP and East Timor, a commitment reinforced by the Portuguese government during the Summit of Heads of State of the Portuguese Language Community. Countries (CPLP), held in July in Luanda.
The activation of this measure is the result of the joint efforts of the National Army, specifically through Camões – Institute for Cooperation and Language and the Portuguese Embassy in Luanda, the Ministry of Health, through the Directorate General of Health (DGS) and the National Authority for Medicines and Health Products (Infarmed) and the “Task Force” of the National Vaccination Plan Against Covid-19 in Portugal.
Angola’s Minister of Health, Silvia Lutukuta, said Tuesday in Luanda that Angola intends to increase its vaccination numbers, predicting it will have 31% coverage by the end of September.
At this time, the state is implementing its own vaccination plan, which expects to vaccinate 20% of the population in the first phase and 29% in the second phase, having already vaccinated more than 1.7 million people, using vaccines from the state. AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Sotenic V, Sinopharma and Johnson & Johnson.
Silvia Lutukuta said the country continues to implement its health diplomacy, in order to obtain vaccines, which is the current challenge of the Angolan government.
“We will receive a large shipment of vaccines, this week we will receive a little more than a million vaccine doses from Pfizer, an amount that is more than the average that we are used to,” the minister said in statements. Tuesday, to the press.
Angola has recorded, as of Tuesday, a total of 46,340 positive cases, 1,166 deaths and 42,738 cured patients.
Covid-19 has caused at least 4,451,888 deaths worldwide, among the more than 213.1 million new coronavirus infections recorded since the beginning of the pandemic, according to the latest report from Agence France-Presse.
The respiratory disease is caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, which was discovered in late 2019 in Wuhan, a city in central China, and currently with variants identified in countries such as the United Kingdom, India, South Africa, Brazil or Peru.
NME // LFS
Lusa / end
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