SPC General Manager Dinusha Dassanayake told The Sunday Morning that although Sri Lanka has been included in the list of countries to receive Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine doses from the US, they have yet to confirm any delivery dates. Last week, US President Joe Biden had pledged to share 80 million vaccine doses with other countries, with most of those to be distributed by Covax, a global alliance of multilateral agencies. At present, Sri Lanka is struggling to secure at least 600,000 doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca Covishield vaccine manufactured by the Serum Institute of India to administer as the second dose. It has already administered over 900,000 with Covishield, but only around 350,000 people have received both the vaccine doses. On 9 June, the President’s office announced that President Gotabaya Rajapaksa had requested Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga to provide 600,000 doses of the Covishield vaccine.

Source: The Nation June 12, 2021 17:37 UTC