Cambodia to begin anti-COVID-19 vaccination drive with China's Sinovac vaccine

PHNOM PENH, March 31 (Xinhua) -- Cambodia will begin to inoculate its citizens with the Sinovac COVID-19 vaccines from April 1 onwards, the country's Ad-hoc Committee for COVID-19 Vaccination said in a statement on Wednesday.

"COVID-19 vaccine is a new tool in addition to the existing health measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19 and to save people's lives," Health Ministry secretary of state Or Vandine, chairwoman of the Ad-hoc Committee for COVID-19 Vaccination, said in the statement.

The upcoming inoculation campaign announced after a new batch of Sinovac vaccines Cambodia purchased from China's pharmaceutical company Sinovac Biotech arrived on March 26.

The vaccines are safe and effective, and many countries in the region and in the world have been using them, the statement said, adding that some countries have already inoculated millions of their citizens.

The Southeast Asian nation first launched a vaccination drive on Feb. 10 after it had received 600,000 doses of Sinopharm vaccines from China and 324,000 doses of Indian-made AstraZeneca vaccine from the COVAX Facility.

As of Tuesday, more than 400,600 people in priority groups had been vaccinated against the virus, a government report showed.

Cambodia has officially registered a total of 2,440 confirmed COVID-19 cases since the start of the pandemic in January last year, with 11 deaths and 1,191 recoveries.