“The priority for immunization will be frontline health workers who are the first line of defense against COVID,” said Ted Chaiban, regional director for the Middle East and north Africa at UNICEF.

Hundreds of thousands more are scheduled to arrive in the coming months. The 203,000 jabs that arrived in Damascus Thursday will cover government-held areas and those under the control of Kurdish fighters in the northeast. Thursday’s announcement came a day after Syria’s last rebel-held enclave received its first batch of 53,800 COVID-19 vaccines from neighboring Turkey. children’s agency UNICEF to distribute the vaccine equally across the country.

Akjemal Magtymova, the representative of the World Health Organization in Syria, said that the government drafted a plan with the World Health Organization and U.N.