Sri Lanka stepped up its inoculation drive against severe disease of Covid-19 with the total number of individuals in the country who have received the booster dose of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine crossing the milestone of 5 million.
According to State Minister of Production, Supply and Regulation of Pharmaceuticals, Prof. Channa Jayasumana said this vaccination target was reached after the 30,253 booster doses administered on Thursday (January 26).
Against this backdrop, the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 took hold in Sri Lanka just within two months replacing Delta as the dominant strain. The country also experienced a resurge in the number of daily infections over the past week.
From January 19 to 25, Sri Lanka consecutively recorded more than 800 daily cases. The tally exceeded 900 on Wednesday (Jan. 26) after a period of four months.
Sri Lanka has recorded a total of 604,581 positive cases of Covid-19 since the outbreak of the pandemic and 576,781 of them have recorded from the infection. But, approximately 12,454 of them are still under medical care.
Meanwhile, the death toll from the novel coronavirus now stands at 15,346.
