The health minister of Jordan, Nathir Obeidat, said on 25 February 2021 that the country's national inoculation programme will speed up significantly in coming weeks as more COVID-19 vaccines arrive, Reuters news agency repaired on Friday.

Obeidat was quoted as telling old state-funded public broadcaster al Mamlaka: "Inoculation will speed up in the next few weeks and coming few months."

According to Obeidat, Jordan is set to shortly receive 2.2 million doses of Pfizer- BioNTech's COVID-19 vaccine. The government had said earlier this year that it had struck a deal to buy one million doses.

Reportedly, most of the COVID-19 vaccines that have arrived in small weekly batches so far have been from Pfizer-BioNTech, although the government has also received undisclosed quantities from the UAE of China's SinoPharm COVID-19 vaccine.

The first shipments of AstraZeneca Plc's COVID-19 vaccine, which was granted provisional approval this week, will also arrive in the next two weeks, Obeidat said, adding that the country had the resources to inoculate as many as 40,000 people daily.

So far, Jordan has administered 150,000 COVID-19 vaccine doses since it began its vaccination programme over a month ago.

Reportedly, only 400,000 people has so far signed up for the free shots since the government-run registration began in December 2020, with officials urging more people in the country of ten million to register. Priority is being given to the over-60s.

So far, Jordan has reported 380,268 COVID-19 cases and 4,627 deaths.