Botswana's Ministry of Health on Tuesday said it expected the second phase of the country’s COVID-19 vaccination roll out program to resume very soon after it restarted the process of completing the due diligence assessment on all vaccines that arrive in the country.

According to the ministry, the documentation that had accompanied a recent consignment of COVID-19 vaccines was incomplete and, therefore, caused the assessment process to be temporarily halted.

Earlier this month, Botswana received more than 400,000 doses of Sinovac COVID-19 vaccine purchased through a bilateral agreement and on Saturday received more than 100,000 doses of AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine donated by Germany.

"The Ministry of Health and Wellness issued a public statement last week indicating that it was unable to complete the due diligence assessment of the Sinovac vaccine that it received recently. This was because of the incomplete documentation that had accompanied the Sinovac vaccine," the ministry said in a statement.

"Members of the public are informed that the said documentation was delivered on 20 September 2021. This therefore, means that the process to complete the due diligence assessment that has to be conducted on all vaccines that arrive in the country, has resumed.”

The ministry said an assessment on both vaccines was expected to be completed "in the next few days" and the vaccination campaign will resume "before the end of this week" with individual district health management teams (DHMT) announcing their vaccination schedules.

This second phase of the vaccination plan targets individuals aged between 30 and 54 years but began with persons aged between 45 and 54 years due to a limited supply of vaccines.

Botswana hopes to have vaccinated 64 percent of its target population by the end of October. At least 21.6 percent of the eligible population has so far been vaccinated, according to government data.

(With input from Ministry of Health-Botswana)