Sri Lanka has approved the emergency use of the Chinese Sinovac vaccine against COVID-19. It is the second Chinese COVID-19 vaccine approved by Sri Lanka's National Medicines Regulatory Authority (NMRA), News First reported. The country has already been administrating China's Sinopharm vaccine. China on Thursday announced that it will donate another 1.6 million doses of the Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccine to Sri Lanka.
Besides this, Covishield, Sputnik and Pfizer vaccines are also being administrated in the country. Sinovac CoronaVac has been developed by Sinovac/China National Pharmaceutical Group. In June, the WHO Strategic Advisory Group of Experts (SAGE) on Immunization has issued Interim recommendations for the use of the inactivated COVID-19 vaccine.
According to the data published by the Epidemiology Unit of the Ministry of Health showed that, as of Thursday, more than 51 lakh people have obtained their first shot in the island nation, which has a population of 2.18 crores.
Sri Lanka's health authorities administered the highest number of Covid-19 vaccines in a single day with nearly 400,000 people inoculated, statistics from the Health Ministry revealed. According to official figures released on Thursday, 384,763 people had been vaccinated against Covid-19 on Wednesday, out of which 338,572 people had received the first dose of Sinopharm, and 35,410 people got the second dose of the jab, reports Xinhua news agency.
Last week, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa had put forward a comprehensive mechanism for vaccinating a majority of the Sri Lankan population before September.
(With ANI Inputs)
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