MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 27th December, 2020) Iraq's medical regulator has given emergency use approval to a vaccine against COVID-19 produced by Pfizer and BioNTech, spokesman Saif Al-Badr told the Iraqi news Agency on Sunday.
"The National Authority for Drug Selection has agreed to use the vaccine produced by Pfizer in an emergency manner to confront the Corona pandemic in Iraq," Al-Badr said, as quoted by the agency.
The Iraqi Ministry of Health announced earlier this week that a preliminary import deal for 1.5 million doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine had been agreed.
Delivery of the doses is expected to begin in the New Year, and Hassan al-Tamimi, Iraq's health minister, told the agency on Sunday that all necessary infrastructure will be in place to store the vaccine doses upon arrival.
Since the start of the pandemic, 590,779 positive tests and 12,767 coronavirus-related deaths have been registered in Iraq by public health officials. On Sunday, a further 836 cases were reported in the country.
