France will present Tunisia with more than one million doses of vaccine in the following weeks, the Foreign Ministry declared on Tuesday.
Paris has further decided to place Tunisia on its red list, “which means unvaccinated people will not be able to go or return without a compelling reason,” government spokesman Gabriel Attal stated on Tuesday.
During a telephone call on Sunday with foreign minister Othman Jerandi, the head of French diplomacy Jean-Yves Le Drian pledged to “quickly enhance his aid to support Tunisia in its vaccination campaign.”
The ministry, therefore, promises “the impending arrival of a first French donation of 324,000 doses of AstraZeneca vaccines” through the Covax system, intended to ensure equitable access to vaccines to rich countries and disadvantaged countries, as well as “the delivery of 800,000 supplementary vaccine doses (…) in the coming weeks ”, including 300,000 additional doses of AstraZeneca vaccine and 500,000 doses of Janssen single-dose vaccine.
France will additionally present Tunisia with “essential health equipment, in particular consumables, equipment for the production of medical oxygen and resuscitation beds”, in addition to the equipment already delivered on June 3, on the occasion of a trip to Tunisia by French Prime Minister Jean Castex.