Yangon:
Myanmar launched a COVID-19 vaccination programme on Wednesday, with healthcare employees and volunteer health-related workers the initial to acquire shots of the AstraZeneca and Oxford University vaccine donated by India.
Myanmar managed to include the quantity of COVID-19 instances early in the pandemic, but is now fighting a second wave, recording more than 138,000 instances and 3,082 deaths.
Last week, Myanmar received 1.5 million doses of the vaccine manufactured by the Serum Institute of India, just as China has also pledged vaccine consignments.
“This should create a situation to reduce the rate of infection, so it is such a relief for healthcare workers,” Tun Myint, a overall health ministry official at Yangon General Hospital, told reporters.
The quantity of every day new COVID-19 instances has dropped lately, even though health-related specialists say it is unlikely to provide a complete image offered fairly low testing prices.
“We are so tired from the long fight” against the pandemic, mentioned volunteer health-related worker Khant Ko Ko, who received a vaccine shot at the Ayeyarwady Centre in Yangon exactly where coronavirus patients are treated.
Myanmar’s fragile healthcare method has relied heavily on thousands of volunteers to help in the course of the pandemic and some workers at the centre proudly pointed to the spots on their upper arms exactly where they had been vaccinated.
In the capital Napyitaw, Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi witnessed vaccinations at a hospital and warned that persons nevertheless required to maintain up their guard against the virus.
“I worry some people will become careless,” she was quoted by on the web news portal Myanmar Now as saying.
Myanmar has an ambitious target to vaccinate the complete population of about 54 million persons this year.
The overall health ministry has mentioned up to 30 million further doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine have been ordered with a additional two million due to arrive by the initial week of February.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in the course of a stop by this month promised Myanmar 300,000 doses of a Chinese COVID-19 vaccine.