Covid-19: USAID supports WHO-UNICEF-Morocco Partnership

The US Agency for International Development (USAID) announced on Friday that it has provided an additional $2.5 million to WHO and UNICEF to partner with Morocco to enhance the country’s capacity of vaccine service delivery points, provide crucial cold chain, and logistics support.

The USAID financial contribution will also fund initiatives destined to help local communities receive accurate vaccine information and combat fake news about vaccines.

The United States recently provided Morocco more than 302,000 Johnson & Johnson vaccines. Besides this one-shot vaccine, the North African Kingdom is using AstraZenca and Sinopharm shots in its already successful vaccination campaign which is gaining pace and taking the lead in the region and Africa thanks to the leadership of King Mohammed VI.

Morocco is also expected to receive in the few coming weeks 2 million doses of Pfizer-BioNTech. So far, over 10.8 million people in Morocco have been fully vaccinated, while nearly 15 million others have received their first shot.

According to Africa’s CDC, Morocco is Africa’s champion as it has vaccinated over 36.7 pc of its population. In neighboring Algeria, only 2.5 million vaccines have been administered covering just 4.1 pc of the 44 million strong the population.

Tunisia has immunized 15 pc of its population, while Mauritania has inoculated 9 pc of its population. Even Libya has done relatively better job, than Algeria, covering 4.2 pc its population. This situation is fueling a growing anger of the population in Algeria, which is lagging far behind in North Africa due to corruption, mismanagement of coronavirus pandemic, deepening political crisis and tightening grip of the military junta.