$15 mln ADB loan to help Georgia procure Covid-19 vaccines
ADB’s Covid-19 Vaccine Support Project for Georgia will procure enough vaccines to inoculate about 300,000 people, or about 8% of Georgia’s total population. Photo: Bing Guan| Bloomberg | Getty Images.
Tweet 
Share
The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has approved a $15 million loan to support Georgia’s National Vaccines Deployment Plan by purchasing and delivering an estimated 700,000 doses of Covid-19 vaccines as well as syringes, safety boxes, and other items for administering vaccines, announces the ADB.
It is financed through ADB’s $9 billion Asia Pacific Vaccine Access Facility launched in December 2020 to offer rapid and equitable vaccine-related support to ADB developing member countries.
This project will help save lives in Georgia and restore the confidence of citizens", said ADB President Masatsugu Asakawa.
The government aims to vaccinate 60% of the total adult population in 2021, or about 1.7 million people. ADB’s Covid-19 Vaccine Support Project for Georgia will procure enough vaccines to inoculate about 300,000 people, or about 8% of Georgia’s total population.
The project builds on ADB’s earlier support for Georgia’s Covid-19 response. This includes:
- $100 million loan to support social protection and businesses affected by the economic slowdown
- $200 million policy-based loan to strengthen Georgia’s social protection, fiscal, and debt management systems
- $2.5 million grant to increase testing capacity and procure medical equipment
Image: ADB.
Meanwhile, Georgian health officials are concerned about the possible spoil of a certain portion of the German-US Pfizer vaccine because of the low rate of coronavirus vaccination in the country.
Currently 816,913 doses of Pfizer vaccine are available in the country now, which data expires in December.
About 10,000-11,000 individuals have received the coronavirus vaccine over the past several days in Georgia, while the figure stood at around 20,000 and more at the beginning of the month.
In total 1,700,895 have received one dose of the coronavirus vaccine (Pfizer, Sinovac, Sinopharm or AstraZeneca) since March 2021, of which 740,814 have been completely vaccinated - more than 25% of the country’s adult population.