Ethiopia launches third round COVID-19 vaccination

On Jun 11, 2022 188

Addis Ababa, June 11, 2022 (FBC) – The Ministry of Health (MoH) disclosed that it has started third round COVID-19 vaccinations this Thursday aiming at controlling the spread of the pandemic and combating the multifaceted challenges caused by the disease.

Briefing Journalists yesterday, the Health State Minister, Dereje Deguma (PhD) said that the Ministry has finalized necessary preparations to start providing citizens with COVID19 vaccination nationwide to control the rapid expansion of the pandemic.

According to the State Minister, some 477,000 citizens are infected by the pandemic, of those, 7,516 lost their life, and 22 of them are in critical condition until Thursday’s report. Out of the 530 million citizens infected by the pandemic, 6.3 million of them died as per the last report of Friday worldwide.

He further noted that the number of people infected by the COVID-19 and going to the intensive care unit (ICU) is increasing over the past four weeks in Ethiopia. The dynamic nature of the disease and recklessness of many citizens to apply simple and effective preventive measures are the main serious factors exacerbating the prevalence of the pandemic over the past 30 days.

The government of Ethiopia has been carrying out various activities to control the rapid expansion of Covid-19 pandemic since its outbreak across the nation though not adequate compared with the serious causes of the pandemic, according to EPA.

As to Dereje, some 29.5 million doze has been distributed in Ethiopia since March 2013 E.C. In this regard, 24.5 million citizens (44 percent) are less than 12 years old and have taken one dose (First round vaccination.) Similarly, 21.5 million people, over 12 ages were fully vaccinated. On the other hand, some 12 billion doze COVID-19 vaccines are distributed worldwide and 3.1 billion people have taken the vaccines fully.

“The ministry has given serious attention to the conflict affected and drought areas of the nation. In this regard, it has planned to increase the full vaccination service from the total rate of 37.8 percent to 70 percent by vaccinating 25 million citizens shortly,” he added.

Meanwhile, the Ministry has been carrying out various activities in 20 corridors to prevent the Monkeypox disease from entering Ethiopia, it was learned.