Morocco launches mass vaccination program with Chinese herbs

Rabat – Morocco is preparing for an ambitious COVID-19 vaccination program and initially relies on Chinese vaccines that have not yet completed advanced trials to prove safe and effective We are aiming to vaccinate 80% of adults with surgery starting this month.

The first injection could be done within a few days, a health ministry official told The Associated Press. In the face of public skepticism about the safety and efficacy of the vaccine, medical professionals and health officials promote the COVID-19 vaccine and encourage Moroccans to be vaccinated. I have appeared on TV for the past few weeks.

The UK launched a vaccination program with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine on Tuesday, with the United States and the European Union competing for approval of a series of Western vaccines, while other governments are considering using Chinese and Russian vaccines. doing.

The World Health Organization states that new vaccines need to be first tested with tens of thousands of people before they are widely deployed to prove that they work and do not cause any side effects of concern. .. However, the United Nations Health Organization also says that even without such data, it is up to individual countries to decide whether there is an urgent national need to use vaccination.

Morocco is fighting the resurgence of the virus infection, with more than 6,000 deaths from the virus. The Kingdom of North Africa has high hopes for two vaccine candidates. One was developed by Sinopharm in China and the other by Oxford University and AstraZeneca in the United Kingdom.

The Sinopharm vaccine has been approved for emergency use in several countries, and the company is still conducting late-stage clinical trials in 10 countries. The AstraZeneca vaccine is still in advanced testing and not yet approved in countries such as the United Kingdom and the United States.

The Moroccan government aims to vaccinate 80% of adults, or 25 million, as soon as the vaccine is approved by national regulators. The priority goes to medical staff, other frontline workers, and the elderly.

It begins with the Sinopharm vaccine tested in 600 Moroccans as part of a clinical trial this fall. Morocco has ordered 10 million doses of vaccine.

The first delivery comes from China, but Morocco also plans to produce the vaccine locally, a senior health ministry official, Abdelhakim Yahyang, told state news agency MAP.

Health Minister Calid It Taleb said that Morocco is from several sources, as COVID vaccines are a very rare product and the production capacity of a single manufacturer is too limited to meet global needs. He said he was looking for a vaccine.

In a Moroccan trial of the Sinopharm vaccine conducted in Casablanca and the capital Rabat from August to November, healthy volunteers were vaccinated in two doses. In advanced trials, volunteers received either a vaccine or a placebo. According to the Minister of Health, early results proved that the vaccine was “safe and effective” and that no serious side effects were reported.

However, some Moroccans use social media to question the safety of vaccines, pointing out that China is the first epicenter of a pandemic and questioning how effective vaccines are. I’m watching.

Sinopharm’s shots rely on tested techniques to deliver vaccines using killed viruses, similar to polio vaccination. Major Western competitors, such as vaccines manufactured by Oxford and AstraZeneca, are using newer, lesser-proven technologies to target the spiked protein of the coronavirus.

In China, CNBG, a state-owned Sinopharm subsidiary, has provided vaccines to 350,000 people outside of clinical trials, CNBG executives said.

Moroccan critics have also expressed concern that citizens may be forced to vaccinate, but the Minister of Health argued that COVID-19 vaccination is not mandatory and will be free.

Prime Minister Saad-Eddine El Othmani sought to reassure him that hesitated about the robustness of the country’s regulatory process for vaccine approval.

Morocco’s mass vaccination activities include the deployment of 2,888 vaccination stations and mobile units to vaccinate people in factories, offices, campuses and prisons. The Ministry of Health said it would mobilize more than 12,000 medical professionals and troops to ensure rapid distribution.

Vaccines will be available in the first place to those at highest risk of getting the virus: health care professionals, security guards, essential workers in critical departments, and people suffering from chronic illness.

The exact date of the deployment has not been set, but the Minister of Health said, “We are doing our best to start in mid-December.”

Separately, according to the World Health Organization, Morocco is supported by Covax, an international effort to ensure that vaccine supplies reach developing countries if the group meets its funding goals92. It is expected to become one of the low and middle income countries of.

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Contributed by AP Medical Writer Maria Cheng from London.

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