Portugal offers over 30,000 doses of vaccines to Cape Verde valued at 53,700 euros
In a press release, the Ministry of Health of Cape Verde informed that the 30,000 doses of vaccine will arrive overnight at Praia international airport, aboard a TAP flight.
“This action stems from the Portuguese Government’s political commitment to, under the second phase of the Action Plan to Combat covid-19 in Portuguese-speaking African Countries (PALOP), make available to partner countries to strengthen the combat vaccination process to the pandemic, “said the Cape Verdean executive.
He also underlined that the donation is the result of the “joint effort” of the Portuguese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, through the Camões Institute and the embassy in Praia, and the Ministry of Health, through the General Directorate of Health and National Medicines Authority and Health Products (Infarmed).
In addition to the 30,000 doses of vaccine from AstraZeneca, estimated at 53,700 euros, the delivery also includes 31,200 syringes and 30,000 needles.
This will be the third donation of vaccines from Portugal to Cape Verde, after two previous ones, the first of 24 thousand doses, in May, and the same amount, in July.
“With this donation, a total of 78,000 doses of vaccines have been donated by the Portuguese Government to the Cape Verdean Government, since the beginning of the vaccination campaign”, stated the Ministry of Health of Cape Verde.
These 24 doses of a thousand vaccines will add to the 715,150 that Cape Verde had received so far through various mechanisms, bringing it to a total of 739,150 doses.
In a press conference today, the national director of Health, Jorge Barreto, said that the country had already used almost 78% of the vaccine doses received, with 82.8% of people having already received the first dose.
Regarding the second dose, he added that Cape Verde currently has a rate of 67.6% of people fully vaccinated.
Since March 2020, the country has registered a cumulative total of 38,363 positive cases, of which there are 37,949 people who have already been discharged, 44 active cases and 349 deaths were registered, the last one was on October 23, there is more than one month.
Covid-19 caused at least 5,197,718 deaths worldwide, among more than 260.81 million infections by the new coronavirus registered since the beginning of the pandemic, according to the most recent balance of the Agence France-Presse.
The disease is caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, detected in late 2019 in Wuhan, a city in central China.
A new variant, an Omicron, was recently detected in South Africa and, according to the World Health Organization, the “high number of mutations” may imply greater infectivity.