Morocco’s long-awaited vaccination campaign expected to start next week

The anti-Covid-19 vaccination campaign is expected to start next week, according to the head of Morocco’s National Council of Doctors.

«The campaign will be launched by next week, but the exact date of its start has not yet been determined as well as that of the arrival of vaccine doses», Dr. Boubekri Mohamadeen, head of the national body, told Yabiladi on Wednesday.

However, well-informed sources told French-language newspaper Medias24 revealed that the first batches of the AstraZeneca vaccine will be received on Saturday, January 16. The same source reports that Indian biotechnology and pharmaceuticals company Serum Institute of India will be providing the Kingdom with its first vaccine doses.

The first phase of the campaign will target frontline staff in the health, security and education sectors, as well as vulnerable and elderly people, before being extended to the rest of the population.

Indeed, a document signed by the head of the National Doctors Council and shared by Medias24 indicates that doctors who have not signed up yet to receive the vaccine will have to do it before January 15, through TLS Contact, a firm that manages visa and consular services for government clients around the world.

The same document indicates that the same company will later take care of setting up vaccination appointments for private doctors. It is not clear whether TLS Contact would do the same for the rest of the people targeted by the vaccination campaign.

It is worth mentioning that Morocco authorized the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine, developed in collaboration with the Oxford University. The Moroccan government announced it had ordered 65 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines from China's Sinopharm and Britain's AstraZeneca.