Covid-19: Algeria launches wide vaccination campaign

ALGIERS— Algeria on Saturday launched a wide vaccination campaign against COVID-19 aiming at reaching herd immunity as soon as possible by vaccinating the largest number of people.

This national campaign aims at vaccinating “at least 70 percent of the adult population by the end of 2021,” said Health Minister Abderrahman Benbouzid, specifying that people aged under 18 should also be protected because they are increasingly affected by the Delta variant of COVID-19.

Once the goal of this campaign is achieved, the level of danger caused by the pandemic as well as the pressure on hospitals and the nursing staff would decrease, he added.

“To date, we have vaccinated 8 million citizens, of which 5 million have received the first dose and 3 million have received two doses,” said Djamel Fourar, head of the scientific committee in charge of monitoring the pandemic.

Algeria has been relying on China’s Sinovac vaccine in its vaccination campaign against COVID-19. Algerian authorities agreed with their Chinese counterparts to locally produce the Sinovac vaccine in a bid to speed up the vaccination process and then export the vaccine to neighboring and African nations.

Algerian health authorities on Saturday reported 351 new COVID-19 cases and 26 fatalities in the past 24 hours, taking the total infections to 197,659 since the outbreak of the pandemic in February 2020.

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK