El-Sissi: Egypt needs 70M shots of virus vaccine

Egypt's President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi said the country needed 70 million doses of coronavirus vaccine to inoculate millions of people during the first stage of a vaccination campaign.

In televised comments late on Saturday El-Sissi said that the first stage of the campaign would target health care workers, elderly people and those suffering from chronic diseases.

The Egyptian leader, however, said the response among health care workers has been between 45% and 50%. “There are people who say we do not want” to be vaccinated, he said.

Hundreds of health care workers have been vaccinated since the government launched its campaign in late January.

Egypt, the Arab world's most populous country with more than 100 million people, received a 50,000-dose shipment of the Chinese-made Sinopharm vaccine in December and another 50,000-dose shipment of AstraZeneca vaccine last month.

The government has said it reserved 100 million doses of the approved vaccines, according to the state-run Al-Ahram newspaper.

Egypt, which has seen a decrease in new coronavirus cases in the past two weeks, has reported more than 169,100 confirmed virus cases, including 9,604 deaths.

Image credit: AP