COVID-19: Kurdistan Region’s Duhok province launches vaccination campaign
ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – Health workers in the Kurdistan Region's province of Duhok began injecting the first doses in the local government's coronavirus vaccination campaign on Saturday.
A media official from Duhok Health Directorate, Hamza Raziki, told Kurdistan 24 that the first phase of the plan is to vaccinate other health personnel working in COVID-19 treatment centers before moving on to other parts of the population, including the elderly and those with pre-existing conditions that put them at high risk for the deadly virus.
The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) began rolling out its vaccine program in Erbil on Thursday, with healthcare workers receiving the first doses there as well.
Read More: Healthcare workers get first jabs as Kurdistan Region rolls out Sinopharm vaccine
The vaccine, a product of the Chinese state-owned pharmaceutical giant Sinopharm, has recently been approved for emergency use in a number of countries.
On Tuesday, Kurdistan Region Minister of Health Saman Barzinji signed a memorandum of understanding with the head of the Chinese Consulate in Erbil after taking possession of the first shipment.
Read More: COVID-19: Kurdistan Region receives its first batch of 5,000 vaccine doses
A plane loaded with 50,000 doses of the coronavirus vaccine for use throughout Iraq and the Kurdistan Region arrived earlier that day at Baghdad International Airport.
Raziki added that Duhok’s share of the total amounted to 500 doses.
The initial shipment was donated from China to Iraq as part of an agreement that Baghdad would buy additional doses in the coming weeks.
In late January, a conference on COVID-19 vaccination strategy was held in Erbil to discuss international, domestic, and local challenges of implementing immunization programs.
The KRG reports that the number of infections so far in the autonomous region has reached 110,256, with over 3,500 of them fatal.
The coronavirus has infected more than 116 million people worldwide and killed nearly 2.6 million, according to Johns Hopkins University’s database. The actual figures could be dramatically higher due to insufficient testing capabilities or underreporting.
Editing by John J. Catherine