Almaty Authorities Have Temporarily Stopped Mass Vaccination

As Nariman Tabynbayev, head of the Almaty administration’s public health department said on April 4, the city is forced to temporality stop the mass vaccination because of lack of the vaccine. However, health system officials will continue to invite some representatives of vulnerable groups to the vaccination.

According to the official, the Almaty health system’s preparedness rate for the vaccination is 100%.

«Our clinics alone can cover with the vaccination about 9 to 11 thousand people. If we do add here some public places, the vaccination rate might be much higher. Over the last two days, we learned how to increase the capacity of these vaccination stations and now Almaty is prepared for the mass vaccination,» reported Sputnik Kazakhstan citing Tabynbayev.

In Almaty, along with regular clinics two vaccination stations work in the Asia Park trading center and the Palace of the Republic. As expected, two additional stations will be opened in Mega Almaty and Mega Park shopping malls.

As the official noted, an additional 250 to 300 thousand doses of Kazakhstani-made Sputnik V should be supplied to the city over April. Once the vaccine is here, the mass vaccination campaign will be continued.

«The mass vaccination will start right after the arrival of a new batch of Sputnik V. Let’s wait three or four days and the vaccine will be here. However, until the new batch arrives, we have to temporarily stop the campaign. Currently, the vaccine is available for the vulnerable groups only. But of course, if someone just stayed in a queue and there is some extra vaccine he can get it,» Tabynbayev said.

So far Almaty health system has received 50,000 doses only; 34,900 of these arrived only recently.

According to Almaty health officials, when the mass vaccination begins all city districts will have equal access to the vaccine. So, throughout that future campaign, everyone interested will be able to get a shot regardless of official registration or place of residence.

For example, more than 17,000 people were vaccinated in the last two days, including some volunteers who were never registered in Almaty.

According to the Interagency Commission as of March 29, roughly 122,000 people got their doses. That puts Kazakhstan at 58th position in the list of 85 countries where the mass vaccination has begun.

However, Minister of Health Alexey Tsoy insists that the mass vaccination, which started on February 1, meets the schedule even though the lack of vaccine prevents the campaign from advancing to a larger scale.

To overcome the situation, the government is currently negotiating with Russia and China; it wants them to send Kazakhstan one million doses of Sputnik V and three million doses of the Chinese vaccine named Sinovac respectively. Also, Kazakhstan has started the negotiation process with Pfizer, Tsoy stated.

Given another one million doses of Sputnik V that is currently being produced at the Karaganda Pharmaceutical Complex, this amount of vaccine should be enough to set the vaccination campaign on schedule.