Egypt received Sunday its first shipment of Moderna's coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccine (784,280 doses) financed by the Canadian government via the COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access (COVAX) initiative, in cooperation with Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance. Egypt's Minister of Higher Education and Acting Minister of Health, Khaled Abdel Ghaffar, said the new vaccine shipment comes within the country's plan to diversify and secure COVID-19 vaccines to citizens. Khaled Megahed, the spokesperson for the Health Ministry, said that the Moderna vaccine has emergency use approval from the World Health Organization and the Egyptian Drug Authority (EDA). He added that the shipment will be subject to examination at the EDA laboratories before its roll-out. Egypt was able in a short period to secure all anti-coronavirus vaccines, including Sinovac, Sinopharm, AstraZeneca, Sputnik, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, and Moderna. The Ministry of Health and Population reiterated its call for citizens to register for vaccination, asserting that the Egyptian state spares no effort to provide COVID-19 vaccines for free, through permanent cooperation with international bodies.
