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‘Japan responded positively to AstraZeneca request’

10 Jun 2021

  • Most who took 1st dose in Jan yet to get 2nd

  • President's Media says good news conveyed by Japanese envoy

By Buddhika Samaraweera   With most people who received the first dose of the Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine in late January yet to receive their second doses, a request by President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga for 600,000 doses of AstraZeneca vaccine has received a “positive response”, the President's Media Division (PMD) stated yesterday (9). In addition, the PMD said the Japanese Government has agreed to the President’s request for equipment needed for Covid-19 suppression. The matter had been communicated to the President during a meeting he held with Japanese Ambassador to Sri Lanka Sugiyama Akira at the Presidential Secretariat yesterday. India gifted a total of 500,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine on 28 January, and Sri Lanka’s Covid-19 vaccination drive commenced a day later. The vaccines were given to the frontline workers and the security personnel, and India’s Serum Institute, which manufactured the vaccine, assured that it would send more consignments of the vaccine soon. However, the inoculation programme was affected as the Serum Institute suspended vaccine supply to other countries, due to the rapid spread of the Covid-19 virus in India. Also, Sri Lanka, last March, received the first batch of 264,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccines provided under the World Health Organisation’s (WHO’s) Covax facility. Covax is the global initiative to ensure rapid and equitable access to Covid-19 vaccines. Meanwhile, in response to the speculations as to whether it would be possible to achieve the desired results of the second dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine since nearly five months have passed since the first dose was administered, the Ministry of Health stated on Tuesday that recent studies had found that the time period between the first and second dose could be extended up to about six months. It was also revealed that negotiations are underway with several countries, including the United States, to bring the second dose of the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine to Sri Lanka.    


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