Today, April 5th, 2021, the first 24,000 doses of AstraZeneca vaccines against COVID-19 arrived in Timor-Leste, under the COVAX Mechanism. Vaccine transport was supported by UNICEF.
The vaccine arrival ceremony, at President Nicolau Lobato International Airport, was attended by the Minister of Health, Odete Maria Freitas Belo, the Vice Minister of Health, Bonifácio Mau Coli dos Reis, the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Cooperation, Adaljiza Magno, the UNICEF representative in Timor-Leste, Bilal Aurang Zen Durrani, and the representative of the World Health Organization in Timor-Leste, Arvind Mathur. Other development partners and members of the diplomatic corps also participated in the ceremony.
The Minister of Health, in her intervention during the ceremony, thanked “the collective effort that all partners, mainly WHO and UNICEF, have made for the arrival of these vaccines to Timor-Leste, which will allow our population to be vaccinated against COVID-19”.
After the ceremony, the vaccines were transported to the central warehouse of the Autonomous Service for Medicines and Health Equipment (SAMES).
The launch of the vaccination campaign should take place on April 7th, World Health Day, in Dili, and then the vaccines will be administered to frontline staff and elderly people with comorbidities.