Cairo (Egypt), March 22: Tunisian Health Minister Faouzi Mehdi has been vaccinated against COVID-19 with Russia's Sputnik V, the country's Health Ministry informs.
According to a ministry statement obtained by Sputnik, Mehdi got his first shot of the Russian vaccine in Ariana, a suburb of Tunis.
After getting vaccinated, Mehdi said that over 12,000 Tunisians have already been vaccinated. On Sunday alone, 3,571 Tunisians got their shots.
A mass vaccination campaign started in Tunisia on March 13. On March 9, Mehdi welcomed the first batch of the Russian Sputnik V vaccine against the coronavirus at the Carthage International Airport in the capital city of Tunis, broadcaster Mosaique FM reported.
The minister also said that Tunisia was also planning to acquire 93,600 doses of the Pfizer vaccine via the World Health Organisation's COVAX facility.
Globally, Russia's Sputnik V has already been approved for use in 54 countries, with two of them in the EU - Hungary and Slovakia. The prestigious Lancet medical magazine published a study in February, confirming the vaccine efficacy at 91.6 percent.
Source: Sputnik
