US donates over 300,000 vaccines

MORE than 300,000 doses of the Johnson & Johnson (J&J) Coronavirus (Covid-19) vaccine donated by the United States through the Covax-Facility arrived in Port Moresby on Friday.
The donation of 302,400 J&J vaccine doses is to assist Papua New Guinea in its fight against the Covid-19.
It is the first shipment of the 80 million doses of the vaccine that US President Joe Biden committed from the US vaccine supply to support global needs.
US Ambassador to PNG, the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu Erin McKee said the US was honoured to support the Government to mitigate the impacts of the Covid-19.
“I would also like to acknowledge our goodwill and close collaboration with the Health Department and the National Control Centre,” she said.
“The milestones we have achieved to date would not have been possible without our strong and enduring partnership.”
The vaccine donation follows a May response by the US government to the PNG Government’s request for critical assistance needed to confront the evolving Covid-19 situation.
In partnership with FHI360, the World Health Organisation (WHO), and Unicef, the US Agency for International Development (USaid) quickly redirected funding to procure infection prevention and control items for the Health Department.
The vaccine doses also follow the US delivery of more than 5,000 GeneXpert Sars-CoV-2 cartridges to assist with Covid-19 patient identification and contribute to nationwide testing data.
This assistance was funded through the USAid Covid-19 response in PNG.
To date, the US government has provided US$35 million (about K122 million) in direct Covid-19 relief and recovery assistance to the Pacific Islands since the start of the pandemic.
The US government has also contributed US$4 billion (about K14 billion) to the Vaccine Alliance Gavi in support of Covax’s purchase and delivery of Covid-19 vaccines to 92 low and middle income countries and country vaccination readiness activities.
This makes the US the largest single financial donor supporting Covax.