Tashkent, Uzbekistan (UzDaily.com) -- The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) delivered 660,000 doses of the Covishield (AstraZeneca) coronavirus vaccine to Uzbekistan on 17 March 2021.

Covishield is a COVID-19 vaccine developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca, administered intramuscularly. The vaccine is stable at household refrigerator temperatures and costs between US$3 and US$4 per dose.

UNICEF delivered Covishield to Uzbekistan under the COVAX program. Vaccines were donated to Uzbekistan. The total cost of the shipment is US$1.98 million. CoviShield is manufactured at the Serum Institute India facilities in India.

Munir Mammadzade, Head of UNICEF Office in Uzbekistan, noted that Uzbekistan is one of the first countries in the region to receive a vaccine against coronavirus.

He added that as part of the first stage, Uzbekistan may receive another batch of vaccine in May. About 2.3 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine are expected to be delivered in May. Within the first stage, about 3% of the population will be vaccinated.

The UNICEF representative stressed that by the end of the year, about 20% of the population of Uzbekistan will be vaccinated under the COVAX program.

According to him, first of all, medical workers, people over 70 and other priority categories of the population will be vaccinated.

Munir Mammadzade said that a cold chain has been established in Uzbekistan for storing vaccines. 17 cold warehouses were put into operation. Four more will be open until the end of 2021.

About the side effects, he noted that more than 14 million people have been vaccinated with the AstraZeneca vaccine. There have now been 17 reported unconfirmed cases of side effects, but there is no evidence yet that these side effects are vaccine-related.

Mammadzade noted that within the framework of the COVAX program, the issue of supplying Pfizer vaccine to Uzbekistan was considered. But it was decided to abandon this idea due to the fact that Uzbekistan, like most countries in the world, does not have the infrastructure for storing vaccines at a temperature of -70. The UNICEF representative noted that the organization will supply to Uzbekistan those vaccines that can be stored at temperatures from 2 to 8 degrees and have passed WHO certification.