South Sudan closes Covid vaccination centres

The health authorities in South Sudan say they have closed down all the Covid-19 vaccination centres after running out of the jabs.

The country received 132,000 doses of Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine from the Covax facility, but 72,000 of them were donated to neighbouring Kenya over concerns that they would expire before use.

South Sudan had a slow rollout of the vaccination programme and the ministry says the doses that remained have been used to vaccinate more than 50,000 people with the first dose and 4,000 of them with a second dose.

About 9,000 healthcare workers have been vaccinated.

“We have deployed successfully 95% of the 60,000 doses that remained with us with a wastage of about 4%, and this is within acceptable range. Now all our centres have closed...” Dr John Rumunu Pasquale, a director-general in the health ministry said.

He disclosed that three types of Covid-19 variants of concern are circulating in South Sudan – the Alpha, Delta and Beta variants.