MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 07th March, 2021) Georgia sets the end of March as its deadline for importing the first COVID-19 vaccine doses, Mamuka Mdinaradze, ruling party Georgian Dream's parliamentary faction chair, said on Saturday.
Georgia was supposed to receive shipments of vaccines developed by US company Pfizer and UK drugmaker AstraZeneca via the World Health Organization-led (WHO) COVAX facility last month but deliveries have been postponed. COVAX has said that delays were linked to the financial reinsurance of liability, and Tbilisi demanded more explanations from the WHO's facility.
"At the meeting of the political council of the party, we also reviewed the issue of vaccination. Despite the difficult situation, which concerns not only Georgia, we promised the citizens of Georgia to import exclusively WHO-authorized vaccines. The deadline is the end of this month," Mdinaradze said, adding that the country expects deliveries of vaccines made by Pfizer and AstraZeneca.
Deputy Health Minister Tamar Gabunia said on Friday that the Pfizer vaccine is expected to arrive in Tbilisi in the week of March 22.
Moreover, the country's leading epidemiologist Tengiz Tsertsvadze said that Tbilisi concluded a preliminary agreement with US Novavax pharmaceutical company to import one million vaccine doses. In late January, Novavax announced that its vaccine candidate had proved to be 89.3-percent effective at preventing COVID-19 in participants in its phase 3 clinical trial in the UK.
