Presidential aide Shahmar Movsumov has said that a decision was made to start vaccination against COVID-19 in Azerbaijan from January 18, 2021, Azernews reports. 

Movsumov made the remakrs at a briefing of the Operational Headquarters held on January16.

Movsumov specified that at the first stage, health workers will be vaccinated.

He added that comprehensive measures to fight COVID-19 in Azerbaijan are yielding results.

Movsumov reminded that the quarantine regime, which was toughened since December 14, 2020, led to the overall improvement with COVID-19 across the country.

Vaccination against coronavirus in Azerbaijan is under the attention of President Ilham Aliyev and First Vice-President Mehriban Aliyeva, he said.

"Azerbaijan is among the countries that are the first to start vaccination. In most countries, vaccination has not yet begun. Azerbaijan has already acquired high-quality vaccines," he noted.

"The vaccination, which will involve health workers, will begin on January 18, 2021. The process will take approximately 2 weeks. On February 1, the second stage will begin - vaccination of persons over 65 years old," Movsumov stressed.

The presidential aide added that Azerbaijan has two sources for acquiring vaccines against COVID-19.

He added that one of them is the Fund for Combatting COVID-19 and another - allocations made from the state budget in various years.

Meanwhile, the head of the Department of Health Organization at the Azerbaijani Health Ministry Teymur Musayev said that the storage facilities for coronavirus vaccines are being created in Azerbaijan's Shusha city. He noted that the facilities will start functioning soon.

Musayev underlined that he Chinese Sinovac vaccine will be used for vaccination in Azerbaijan.

According to Musayev, Azerbaijan ordered 4 million doses of the vaccine and of them, 2 million doses have already been delivered to Azerbaijan.