Kuwait: Kuwait is planning to give residents the option of taking Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine even if they have taken Oxford-AstraZeneca as their first jab if there was a further delay in receiving the documents for the third shipment of Oxford doses that arrived in the country.
Minister of Health Dr. Basel Al Sabah said such delays are a regionwide problem and that the country will administer Pfizer shots instead for those awaiting the Astra shots.
The third shipment, which came from Russia, arrived in Kuwait on May 10 and it has not been handed over to the Ministry of Health as some documents to authenticate the cargo have not yet been received.
Dr. Basel said that the documents are expected to arrive on June 8 and that they are aiming to vaccinate 200,000 people within 10 days across 30 vaccination centres.
New vaccines
Although Kuwait has only been administering the Pfizer and Oxford vaccines as of now, Dr. Basel announced that Kuwait has signed a contract with the US pharmaceutical companies to receive the Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines.
While the two US vaccines are not being administered in Kuwait, they are approved by the Ministry of Health, therefore anybody who received either jab outside of Kuwait receives a vaccine certificate.
