1 million doses of Covid-19 vaccine arrive in Georgia
By Nika Gamtsemlidze
Monday, July 5
Two Chinese vaccines, Sinovac and Sinopharm arrived in Georgia on Friday, July 2. The registration on the vaccines should have started on Saturday, but due to the problems with the registration portal, many people could not access it.
As of now, the portal is up and running. The Deputy Health Minister of Georgia, Tamar Gabunia, said that the reason for the website not working was an attack on the server by hackers. The country is also awaiting another million doses of the Pfizer vaccine. This vaccine should arrive in the country throughout July. This was discussed by the Prime Minister of Georgia, Irakli Garibashvili on Friday at a special press conference.
He also noted that the mass immunization process will start on Monday and an additional one million doses of Chinese vaccine will be introduced in the coming weeks. Commenting on Pfizer, the Prime Minister said that as a result of successful negotiations between the authorities, an agreement has been reached, a contract has been signed and a million doses have been paid for already.
According to him, by the end of the year, Georgia will have a total of 4 million vaccines. Other than that, the Prime Minister of the country also said that the country should also receive several hundred thousand doses of Pfizer vaccine from the United States, however, he noted that he would talk more about it later.
“According to the decision of the US government and specifically by the president of the country, several hundred thousand doses of Pfizer vaccine will be given to Georgia as a gift. We will inform you about this later, as we discuss the final details with our friends and colleagues,” said Garibashvili.
The Georgian Prime Minister also discussed the intensity of vaccination in the country, claiming that Georgia should manage to conduct 20-25 thousand vaccinations in a day.
The Deputy Health Minister, Tamar Gabunia talked about the available vaccines in the country and the plans. According to Gabunia, Georgia has completed negotiations with Sinopharm, Sinovac, and Pfizer. According to her, part of the vaccines will be available in the country through the Covax platform.
She also noted that the country had negotiations with Moderna and Johnson & Johnson, however, the agreement could not have been reached because some conditions were not acceptable for the country.
As of July 2, a total of 266,161 vaccinations had been administered. 104,196 people are fully vaccinated.
