Syria’s last rebel-held enclave has received its first batch of COVID-19 vaccines, with a refrigerated truck offloading over 50,000 United Nations-secured shots in the overcrowded province.
The delivery Wednesday came hours before a bigger shipment was expected to arrive in the capital Damascus for inoculations in government-controlled areas.
The first batch of vaccines come as the war-torn country experiences a new surge in infections, overwhelming hospitals already reeling from conflict and deteriorating health care services.
The AstraZeneca vaccines were delivered to Idlib province through a border crossing with Turkey, the northwestern territory’s only gateway to the outside world.
