Tajik leader announces virus vaccination drive

Tajikistan’s authoritarian leader Emomali Rakhmon ordered his government on Monday to begin a vaccination drive against the coronavirus, less than two months after he declared the pandemic over.

In a decree published on the Tajikistan government’s website, Rakhmon said that the impoverished Central Asian country would begin “stage-by-stage immunisation… among vulnerable groups of the population” starting from Monday.

The decree provided no further details on which groups would receive the vaccine first.

Tajikistan received its first batch of vaccines from the UN-backed Covax programme earlier this month, totalling 192,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine.

The country of 9.5 million has been allocated an eventual 624,000 doses by the Covax scheme.

Tajikistan’s Deputy Health Minister Samariddin Alizoda said last week that the country would go forward with the AstraZeneca vaccine despite a number of European countries pausing its use over blood clotting incidents.

He added that the ex-Soviet country is working to source additional jabs, including from China and Russia.

Tajikistan was late to declare any virus cases last year, announcing 15 infections on April 30 just as a World Health Organization delegation prepared to fly out to the republic to review its pandemic response.

Its official figures of 13,308 virus infections and 90 deaths have not been updated since early January.

emg/pvh