Morocco on Wednesday, according to an official document from the Ministry of Health, validated a “temporary emergency authorisation” for the Covid-19 vaccine developed by the British AstraZeneca laboratory and the University of Oxford, published. No date has yet been set for the launch of the vaccination campaign to immunize some 25 million people free of charge.
The Kingdom of Morocco has approved the AstraZeneca/Oxford coronavirus vaccine.Health, safety and education workers, the elderly and those with comorbidities are the first targets of the vaccination campaign, which is not mandatory. Next comes the rest of the population. Computer software managed by the Ministry of the Interior has been set up for the registration of the persons concerned and the monitoring of their state of health.
According to the Ministry of Health, the vaccine has been authorized for 12 months and will be administered in two phases, with an interval of “four to 12 weeks” between doses. About 10 days ago, the authorities announced that they had ordered 65 million doses of British AstraZeneca and Chinese Sinopharm vaccines, saying that preparations for vaccination were “very advanced”.
With its 35 million inhabitants, Morocco has a total of more than 447,000 cases of contamination, including 7618 deaths. To stop the spread of the virus, a curfew has been declared since December 21, 2020, and is expected to last three weeks. Rallies have also been banned and restaurants, cafes, shops and supermarkets must close at 20:00. The restaurants of Casablanca, Marrakech, Agadir and Tangier are totally closed for the period. It should be noted that several cities, including the tourist capital Marrakech, were already subject to restrictions under the state of health emergency in force since mid-March.
