Sharjah24 – AFP: Libya's interim prime minister on Sunday announced the arrival of the first batch of vaccines against Covid-19, as the war-torn country's crumbling health system struggles against a mounting caseload.
"Thanks to God, we have managed to import the first batch of coronavirus vaccines," Abdul Hamid Dbeibah tweeted, saying further doses were on the way.
"I call on the Libyan people to sign up via the vaccine portal," he added, referring to a website launched by the North African country's authorities in early March ahead of the first deliveries.
The health ministry said in a statement that just over 100,000 doses of the Russian Sputnik V jab had arrived in Tripoli.
Libyan authorities have reported over 160,000 cases of the coronavirus among its seven million population, with 2,737 dead.
The World Health Organization said Thursday that two new variants of the coronavirus are present in Libya.
The country has registered around 1,000 new cases per day in recent weeks, but the difficulty of obtaining a test means that the real numbers may be far higher.
No lockdown measures are currently in place, and while masks are obligatory in public places, the measure is widely flouted.
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