The total number of all COVID-19 vaccine doses brought to the country so far for the immunization programme exceeds 20 million doses, State Minister of Production, Supply and Regulation of Pharmaceuticals Minister Professor Channa Jayasumana said.
The number of doses of all vaccines brought to the country increased to 20.8 million with yesterday’s arrival of one million doses of the Sinopharm Covid-19 vaccine manufactured in China.
The Epidemiology Unit said that 12,126,492 persons have been given the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine and that 5,807,496 persons have obtained the second dose as well.
The country has received 2.8 million AstraZeneca vaccine doses, 180,000 Sputnik V doses, 15.7 million Sinopharm doses, 389,000 Pfizer doses and 1.5 million Moderna doses. Incidentally, Pfizer yesterday received full US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval. It is the first vaccine to get full approval – until now, all vaccines had only Emergency Use Authorisation (EUA). Moderna, the other mRNA-based vaccine, is also due to receive full FDA approval soon. The vaccines now available in Sri Lanka were received through purchases, donations and the Covax facility. Sri Lanka received 1.5 million doses of the Moderna vaccine through the Covax facility operated by the World Health Organization (WHO) as a donation from the United States of America.
Also, 264,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine were received through the same WHO Covax facility and another 1.6 million doses of AstraZeneca were received from Japan through the same facility. Initially, India donated 500,000 million doses of the AstraZeneca Covishield vaccine, the version licensed by the Serum Institute of India (SII). However, the export ban imposed by India curtailed further shipments of Covishield from SII. Similarly, 2.7 million doses of the Sinopharm vaccine was received as a donation from China.
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