Azerbaijan Helps Four Countries Curb Spread of Pandemic

The government of Azerbaijan has sent coronavirus vaccines to Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan to help curb the spread of the pandemic.

A total of 50,000 shots of the Vaxzevria (formerly AstraZeneca) vaccine has been delivered to Uzbekistan’s capital city of Tashkent. The aid was supported by the Azerbaijani Embassy in Uzbekistan and the UNICEF office in this country. The vaccine jabs have been handed over to the Center for Sanitary and Epidemiological Surveillance and Public Health of the Ministry of Health of Uzbekistan.

A batch of 40,000 shots of the same vaccine has been supplied to the other Central Asian country, namely Kyrgyzstan.

The Azerbaijani authorities plan to provide the same aid to Tajikistan and Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well. Each country is expected to receive 40,000 jabs of the British-Swedish vaccine Vaxzevria. Azerbaijan Airlines will transport the vaccines to Bosnia and Herzegovina's capital Sarajevo on July 19, while the company's airplane loaded with Covid-19 immunizers will travel to the Tajik capital city of Dushanbe on July 20.

Over 119,000 Covid-19 infection cases have been confirmed in Uzbekistan so far. The number of deaths from the virus stands at 796. In Kyrgyzstan, the number of infections and deaths is more than 149,000 and 2,175, respectively. Slightly over 14,000 people contracted Covid-19 in Tajikistan, where 110 people died from this virus. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, the infection and death cases stand at 205,285 and 9,666, respectively.

Azerbaijan has long been sending the Covid-19 aids to foreign countries.

More than 30 countries and three international organizations have so far received Covid-19 aid from Azerbaijan. The country’s government provided $5 million to Iran and donated $10 million to WHO’s strategic preparedness and response plan to help curb the spread of the pandemic.

First reported in Wuhan, China, in December 2019, the novel coronavirus has infected more than 191 million worldwide, while 4.1 million died from the virus. According to a database by Johns Hopkins University, over 3.6 billion doses of Covid-19 vaccines have been administered globally to date.