Morocco hopes to launch its vaccination campaign by the end of the year

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Photo: Martin Sanchez on Unsplash


After opting for the Chinese Sinopharm and British AstraZeneca vaccines, Morocco hopes to launch a campaign by the end of the year to immunise some 20 million adults in three months, raising expectations, worries and rumours in this country hit hard by the health crisis.


The United Kingdom on Wednesday was the first country in the world to approve the massive use of a vaccine, the one produced by Pfizer/BioNTech, and will deploy it as early as next week in the hope of finally containing the pandemic.

Each country is sovereign to “decree an emergency use” of the vaccine of its choice, explained the Moroccan Health Minister, Khalid Aït Taleb, in an interview with AFP.

The launch date of the campaign in Morocco remains “dependent on the validation COVID. The COVID-19 pandemic is not weakening in the kingdom, with more than 5,000 new cases daily, for a total of 359,844 contaminations, including 5915 deaths and 31,01393 recoveries, according to the latest official figures.

The case-fatality rate remains low (around 1.7%), but the hospitals are close to saturation in the Casablanca region, the economic lung of the country, and the medical staff, on the front line since March, is showing signs of exhaustion, in a sector marked by a shortage of nurses and doctors.
The objective is to vaccinate more than 20 million people in three months by mobilizing 12,750 professionals (public health, private sector, military medicine and the Moroccan Red Crescent).

The first inoculations will be reserved for “front-line” staff (health, safety), “useful people” (transport, etc.) and the “at-risk” population (over 65, health problems, etc.), as the Health Minister explained to AFP.

For more information, please consult (in French) the following link.