The health ministry received a grant from the Chinese government “to secure a first batch of the Chinese Sinopharm vaccine and it will arrive in Iraq on Monday,” read an official statement from the ministry.
Earlier in February, China’s embassy in Baghdad said it was donating 50,000 vaccines to Iraq.
The Ministry of Health has approved the vaccines of Pfizer, AstraZeneca, and Sinopharm. Iraq has also bought into a World Health Organization (WHO)-led vaccine scheme called COVAX to supply vaccines to developing nations. Baghdad has paid more than $169 million dollars for 16 million doses through COVAX.
Iraq signed a deal with Pfizer for 1.5 million doses of their vaccine. Shipment has been delayed and the health ministry said the US-based company in a letter said they require a guarantee of protection “from liability and compensation before supplying the vaccine to Iraq.”
Coronavirus cases have recently spiked in Iraq, with 3,543 new cases reported on Saturday. The country has so far registered over 690,000 cases, according to the health ministry.
Following the spread of the new variant and the spike in cases, a series of new measures were introduced to curb spread of the virus, including a travel ban between Iraqi provinces. The Kurdistan Region has also restricted travel to and from federal Iraq.
Numbers of new cases has also started to rise in the Kurdistan Region, which reported 78 new infections on Saturday, bringing the total number of cases up to 108,717.
Because of the increase in new infections, including of new variants, a new Intensive Care Unit (ICU) for coronavirus patients will be opened in Erbil, Kurdistan Region’s Ministry of Health said on Sunday.
