RABAT (Reuters) – Morocco received on Friday a shipment of 600,000 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine as it expands its inoculation campaign to younger people amid a recent surge in new cases, said Said Afif, a member of the health ministry’s scientific committee.
Morocco so far has Africa’s most vaccinated population administering 27.3 million Sinopharm and AstraZeneca vaccinations in addition to 300,000 doses developed by Johnson and Johnson, according to health ministry data.
“The new shipment is key to beefing up Morocco’s vaccine campaign that will be extended to people aged 12-17,” Afif said.
The country restored last month some restrictive measures to contain a surge in new coronavirus variants after daily cases spiked to more than 9,000 infections.
Morocco has registered 731,084 cases and 10,711 deaths since the outbreak of the pandemic which hit the tourism sector hard.
(Reporting by Ahmed Eljechtimi; editing by Jonathan Oatis)
