The head of the Marshall Islands government's National Disaster Committee is hopeful the government will adopt a reduced quarantine policy for people coming to the Marshall Islands starting next month.
The programme has been so successful the Micronesian republic has withdrawn from the global Covid-19 vaccine facility Covax, aimed at providing equitable access among low and middle income countries.
Covax, which is funded through wealthy governments and donor organisations, had committed 24,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine to help the Marshall Islands achieve 20 percent coverage by year s end.
Deliveries were slated to begin next month.
However, the Marshall Islands Secretary of Health Jack Niedenthal said the US started supplying the Moderna vaccine in December. Next month we re scheduled to get 11,000 more vaccines, said Niedenthal. We ve already got 21,000 vaccines and this is a population of about 56,000 people, and roughly half of those may be eligible.