Macau's COVID-19 vaccination drive will start on Tuesday, Health Bureau (SSM) Director Lei Chin Ion announced today.
Lei made the announcement on the sidelines of a ceremony that marked the delivery of 100,000 Sinopharm jabs from the mainland at the checkpoint of the Zhuhai-Macau Cross-Border Industrial Park this afternoon.
According to Lei, health workers will be the first to be inoculated against the novel coroanvirus. The 1000,000 vaccines that arrived in Macau today are sufficient for 50,000 people, considering that each person requires two jabs.
Macau has a population of about 680,000.
The government has said it also plans to import Germany's BioNTech and the Anglo-Swedish Oxford-AstraZeneca jabs. The BioNTech vaccines will be supplied by Shanghai-based Fosun Pharma.
Lei said that apart from health workers, firefighters, police officers and drivers as well as all those who need to travel to high-risk COVID-19 areas will be among the first to be vaccinated.
The Sinopharm vaccine has reportedly an efficacy of 79 percent and is not suitable for people aged over 60.
The vaccines arrived in Macau by freezer truck after a 30-hour drive from Beijing.
The Macau government has said that all residents, non-resident workers and non-local students will be offered free COVID-19 jabs on a voluntary basis.
Sinopharm, officially known as China National Pharmaceutical Group Corp., is a Beijing-based state-owned enterprise.
