Speaking at the end of a meeting of the multi-sectorial body that took place in Luanda, Francisco Furtado said that the booster dose is already scheduled for the end of the current month, for people over 60 years of age.
"It is also planned that, starting in January, we will start vaccinating our teenagers", between 14 and 18 years old, he said.
People who are more than four months old after taking the second dose can also receive the booster from then on.
"This is what we are doing and we will continue with this effort. The country has vaccine 'stocks' (...), we have all the provinces supplied, there are no ruptures", underlined the minister of State and of the House of Security of the President.
Francisco Furtado admitted that "there are some issues" related to the Sputnik vaccine - one of those that make up the 'mix' of vaccines that Angola acquired or receives through donations, but which is not recognized by Europe and the United States of America - by the that the authorities admit giving a third dose with a different vaccine so that citizens can access vaccination certificates.
Regarding vaccines, the national director of Public Health, Helga Freitas, indicated that Angola had received until 3 December a total of 21,799,330 vaccines, of which 10,215,920 were acquired, with emphasis on the Chinese Sinopharm (9,355,420), followed by Johnson & Johnson (468,000) and Sputnik (392,500).
As part of donations under the Covax initiative, around 10 million more vaccines were received, mainly from Pfizer (5,368,830) and Astrazeneca (3,455,130), followed by Sinopharm (1,226,800) and 337,500 doses from Johnson & Johnson.
Bilateral donations secured 920,000 vaccines from AstraZeneca, 200,000 from Sinopharm and 75,000 from Sputnik.
But to achieve its goals, Angola will acquire or has already committed another 29,133,620 doses, of which 15,484,940 are the responsibility of the Government, with emphasis on Johnson & Johnson (6,532.00), Sinopharm (4,741,080), Moderna ( 2,861,000), Pfizer (1 million), and Sputnik (352,600).
Another 11,246,940 doses will arrive via the Covax mechanism (2,484,000 from AstraZeeneca, 3,963,600 from Johnson & Johnson and 4,799,340 from Pfizer) and 2400,000 will be bilateral donations (Sinopharm).
The country wants to vaccinate 60 percent of the target population (citizens over 18 years old) with at least one dose by the end of this year, for a total of about 15 million people, and Francisco Furtado once again appealed to those who had just the first vaccination to go to the centers to complete the immunization.
The official also underlined the decrease that has been seen in the number of new cases and deaths, which was related to the increase in vaccination.
The cumulative number of people vaccinated with one dose is 6,939,991, which corresponds to a coverage of 44.02 percent of the target population and those who received the full dose were 3,245,389, corresponding to a coverage of 20.58 per hundred;
The total administered doses against covid-19 in Angola is 9,947,889.
