Morocco received the 5th batch of vaccines, bringing to 8 million the number of doses acquired by the Kingdom (7 million Astra Zeneca/1 million Sinopharm), the Health Ministry announced Tuesday.
One month after the launch of the campaign, some 3,657,468 people received the first dose of the vaccine, while the second dose was administered to 293,857 beneficiaries, the head of the communicable diseases division at the Directorate of Epidemiology and Disease Control, Abdelkrim Meziane Bellefquih said during his presentation of the bi-monthly report on the epidemiological situation.
He also recalled that the vaccination campaign has been extended to benefit 60-64 year olds as well as people suffering from chronic diseases and who benefit from compulsory medical coverage schemes, highlighting the launch and institutionalisation of the observation of new strains of the virus within the framework of a Consortium of laboratories, for the identification of SARS-CoV2 variants circulating in Morocco.
Mr. Bellefquih noted that the reproduction rate (R0) of COVID-19 stabilised at 0.98 last Sunday.
For the fifteenth consecutive week, the reproduction rate of COVID-19 has remained below 1 percent, he said.
As of March 2, the total number of cases recorded since the beginning of the pandemic reached 483,766, for a cumulative incidence rate of 1330.8 per 100,000 inhabitants, he continued.
As for the number of deaths recorded at the national level, it fell by 10.4 percent to 8,630, a case-fatality rate of about 1.8 percent, against a global rate of 2.2 percent, he noted, recalling that Morocco is ranked 37th in the world and 3rd in Africa in terms of the number of deaths.
« Today, the pandemic is under control, and the figures of the epidemiological situation are constantly improving,” he stressed, noting however that “vigilance must remain in place and the restrictive measures that allowed us to control the pandemic must be respected.”
HA/lb/abj/APA