Pfizer ranks first in Kurdistan Region vaccination drive

Halgurd Sherwani 2021/08/25 17:56

A vial of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine is seen at a hospital in the Iraqi city of Mosul, July 29, 2021. (Photo: Zaid Al-Obeidi/AFP)

Kurdistan Pfizer-BioNTech AstraZeneca Sinopharm Kurdistan Region COVID-19 Health Vaccines

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – Latest health figures released by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) indicate that doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine are the most widely used among anti-coronavirus inoculations used in the autonomous region of Iraq.

KRG health care professionals are now working with three different companies' vaccines. The first is Pfizer-BioNTech, recently rebranded as "Comirnaty," the second is Sinopharm, and AstraZeneca is the third.

So far, health authorities have administered 308,860 doses of the American-German Pfizer-BioNTech, while there have been 162,266 jabs of the UK-Swedish AstraZeneca and 109,930 of the Chinese Sinopharm, according to a graphic from the KRG released on Wednesday.

Protect Kurdistan. Get Vaccinated ! pic.twitter.com/70Xi59oNEL
— Jotiar Adil (@KRGSpokesperson) August 25, 2021

KRG health workers have so far administered 581,056 doses of the total 1,164,180 it has received as part of its 10-15 percent share allotted by the federal Iraqi government.

The health ministry on Sunday announced the arrival of a new shipment of 415,000 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

According to official government numbers, over 284,000 individuals in the Kurdistan Region have contracted the highly contagious disease with nearly 5,300 of them having died from coronavirus-related complications.

Editing by John J. Catherine