Italy announced that it has donated about 4 million doses of the Corona vaccine “Johnson & Johnson” to Syria, through the “Cofax” platform of the World Health Organization.
The Chargé d’Affairs, Massimiliano Dantono, said in a statement published by the European Union Mission to Syria on its official website, that on January 26, the shipment of the vaccine provided by Italy, amounting to 3 million and 966 thousand doses, arrived on Syrian territory.
He added that Italy stands by the Syrian people, and that, in cooperation with the humanitarian aid of the European Union, UNICEF and the World Health Organization, it particularly supports efforts to address the COVID-19 pandemic, and in general supports efforts to deal with the consequences of the deteriorating humanitarian situation throughout the country.
Yesterday, Spain announced that it had also donated, through the “Kovax” platform, more than 381,600 doses of the “Johnson & Johnson” Corona vaccine for the benefit of the World Health Organization in Syria.
The humanitarian aid provided by the European Union will cover the costs of spreading the vaccines donated by Italy and Spain, as well as the awareness campaign, and will be implemented by the World Health Organization, according to the statement.
According to the statement, the European Union in particular provides humanitarian support to the World Health Organization in Syria in order to help the health system in it deal with the pandemic that is still ongoing, and to achieve the goal of vaccinating 70 percent of the population by mid-2022.
“The supply of vaccines to Syria is slow, and while we were aiming to vaccinate 20 percent of the population by the end of December 2021, the existing vaccines by then were sufficient to cover only 13 percent of the population.”
According to the statement, more than 2.2 million doses of vaccines against Covid-19 were given in Syria, and as of January 24, 2022, only 5.1 percent of the population had received two doses of the vaccine, while 10 percent of the population had received At least one dose of the vaccine.
The above-mentioned figures do not include statistics from northwestern Syria. In northwestern Syria, which is under the control of “Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham” and the Turkish occupation, about 287,000 people received the first dose of the vaccine, and about 146,500 people received the second dose, according to World Health Organization reports.