The Gavi / Covax program will ship 1.9 mn doses of the Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine to Egypt in July, Health Minister Hala Zayed said in a statement yesterday. The shipment was originally set to arrive in Egypt by the first week of June, but it has been delayed as Covax suffers a supply shortage.

It will — so far — be our last Gavi / Covax shipment: The initiative has allocated 4.5 mn shots to Egypt and has so far delivered 2.6 mn. Egypt and six other countries have used 80% of the shots sent by Covax.

We are also expecting to receive in the next two weeks more raw material to produce Sinovac’s vaccine: China will ship material sufficient to produce 7.5 mn doses of the jab, Zayed said. China has so far sent us enough to churn out as many as 10 mn shots of the vaccine. Vacsera’s production facility aims to produce 6 mn doses of Sinovac by the end of the year — and is expected to produce the initial batches any day now, ahead of shipping them off to quality control and (if things go well) to clinics around the country.

The Health Ministry reported 389 new covid-19 infections yesterday, down from 409 the day before. Egypt has now disclosed a total of 280,394 confirmed cases of covid-19. The ministry also reported 30 new deaths, bringing the country’s total death toll to 16,092.

Folks getting Pfizer / BioNTech and Moderna jabs will be warned that the mRNA vaccines carry rare heart risks. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced that it will add a warning about rare cases of heart inflammation following the second shot to its fact sheets for both mRNA vaccines. This came after an advisory group to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) suggested last week a “likely association” between the jabs and rare cases of myocarditis / pericarditis — inflammation of the heart muscle or surrounding membrane.

Health officials said the benefits of receiving the vaccines still outweigh risks, affirming in a statement that the disease is “much more common if you get covid-19, and the risks to the heart from covid-19 infection can be more severe.” Around 1.2k cases following mRNA vaccines have been reported as of 11 June, out of more than 300 mn doses administered in the US, the CDC said.