The delayed shipment of Pfizer-BioNtech Covid-19 vaccinations that was scheduled for Monday will be arriving today, a spokesperson for the Health Ministry has confirmed with The Malta Independent.
On Monday, the Times of Malta reported a delay in shipment of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines that was supposed to arrive on that day. This was confirmed by a spokesperson for the company who said that the delay was caused by a "minor logistical issue", which was resolved soon after, resulting in a number of deliveries being rescheduled.
The spokesperson added that the shipment was expected to arrive on Tuesday (today).
The Malta Independent asked the Health Ministry to confirm if the shipment will be arriving today as indicated by Pfizer-BioNTech itself and a spokesperson for the ministry confirmed that it will in fact be arriving today.
Further details on the shipment could not be provided due to security reasons.
Pfizer-BioNTech is the first of 6 companies that the EU has agreements with to receive the EU's approval to start distributing the Covid-19 vaccine. The first shipment of 10,000 vaccines arrived in Malta last Saturday and the company then scheduled to send batches of vaccines to Malta every Monday after that.
The first vaccine was administered on Sunday to Rachel Grech, a staff nurse at the Infectious Diseases Unit at Mater Dei Hospital. After receiving the vaccine, she spoke of her hope that her experience will encourage Maltese and Gozitans to get vaccinated when they can do so.
Virologist Chris Barbara was the first high-profile medical figure to receive the vaccine yesterday.
Today, Covid-19 vaccinations have also begun being administered in Gozo. Health Minister Chris Fearne announced last week that immunisations at the Gozo General Hospital on 29 December.
Vaccinations have already started being administered to those working within the IDU and ITU wards at Mater Dei Hospital along with those wards which are treating Covid-19 patients.
As per Fearne's announcement last week, workers and residents at St. Vincent de Paule will be offered the vaccine from 1 January, while the first appointment letters will be sent out to people over the age of 85 on 7 January.
The vaccination process will then move on in stages depending on how quickly Pfizer-BioNTech and other vaccine makers such as Moderna, which could get EU approval in the first week of the New Year, can supply the vaccine to Malta. Other companies include AstraZeneca/Oxford University, Sanofi, Janssen and CureVac.
The government has said that it is confident that the whole of Malta's population can be vaccinated by summer.