Timor-Leste receives another 20 thousand COVID-19 vaccines
20,000 AstraZeneca vaccines, provided by Australia, arrived in Timor-Leste today, May 5th, 2021. This is the first shipment of vaccines provided by Australia to Timor-Leste and another 10,000 vaccines are scheduled to arrive on May 19th.
This batch of vaccine arrives in Timor-Leste exactly one month after the first 24,000 vaccines arrived in the country under the COVAX mechanism.
The vaccines were officially delivered by the Australian Ambassador, Peter Roberts, to the Minister of Health, Odete Freitas Belo and to the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation, Adaljiza Magno, in a ceremony held at the Presidente Nicolau Lobato International Airport. The ceremony was also attended by representatives from UNICEF and the World Health Organization.
In her speech, the Minister of Health thanked "the Government of Australia for its contribution to the Timorese people" and also thanked "on behalf of the Ministry of Health and on behalf of the Government, all the support received from donors, international agencies, national and foreign non-governmental organizations", "in this difficult moment that Timor-Leste is facing, in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic and in the response to natural disasters".
The Minister stressed that these 20,000 vaccines will have as priority targets "vulnerable groups or risk groups, with a higher probability of hospitalisation and losing their lives", such as "people over 60 years old and people with chronic diseases such as hypertension, diabetes, kidney diseases requiring haemodialysis, lung diseases such as tuberculosis and chronic bronchitis and also people with HIV/AIDS".
Timor-Leste has currently 1414 active cases of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and has a cumulative total of 2786 infected since the beginning of the pandemic. Four people have died so far infected with the new Coronavirus.
