Iraq is expected to receive its first shipment of coronavirus vaccines on Monday as it tackles a second wave of infection.
Public anger has been mounting over the delay in securing doses compared with other countries in the region.
Health Ministry spokesman Said Al Badr said on Sunday that an Iraqi aircraft landed in China and was scheduled to return to the country on Monday with a shipment of the Sinopharm vaccine.
Mr Al Badr did not say how many doses would be arriving, but said Iraq agreed with China to supply millions.
To alleviate public anger, the ministry published pictures of the shipment being loaded on to the aircraft in China.
Along with the Sinopharm shot, Iraq also approved the Pfizer-BioNTech and Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines.
In December, the country signed an agreement to reserve 1.5 million doses from Pfizer-BioNTech and paid the company $169 million.
The shipment was supposed to arrive this month but have been delayed because of a request from the company for protection from any legal action that might be taken in connection with the doses, a process that needs parliamentary approval, Mr Al Badr said.
Early last year, Iraq joined the Covax initiative for low and middle-income nations to secure enough doses of Covid-19 vaccine for 20 per cent of its population of about 38 million people.
Iraq is facing a second wave of the virus, with new daily case totals of more than 3,000 this week.
A prominent aide to top Iraqi Shiite cleric, Ayatollah Ali Al Sistani, tested positive for the virus last week. Ahmed Al Safi is in a stable condition after having the infection diagnosed on Tuesday, his office said.
The news caused some concern before the visit of Pope Francis to Iraq from March 5 to 8, during which he plans to meet Mr Al Sistani.
The Vatican ambassador to Baghdad also tested positive after touring Iraqi cities to prepare for the visit and meeting senior officials, including Prime Minister Mustafa Al Kadhimi.
To help contain the spread, authorities reimposed strict measures, including a stay-home order on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays.
For the rest of the week, there are restrictions on movement between 8pm and 5am. Schools are suspended until further notice.
The infection rate peaked in late September, when the country registered 5,025 cases in a day.
The highest number of daily deaths was recorded in late June, when 122 people died, ministry figures show.
Iraq's infection rate dropped to about 600 cases a day in early January and less than 10 deaths a day.
On Sunday, the ministry reported 3,248 new cases and 23 deaths, bringing the overall number of confirmed cases to 695,489 and the death toll reached 13,406.
GROUP RESULTS
Group A
Results
Ireland beat UAE by 226 runs
West Indies beat Netherlands by 54 runs
Group B
Results
Zimbabwe tied with Scotland
Nepal beat Hong Kong by five wickets
Retirement funds heavily invested in equities at a risky time
Pension funds in growing economies in Asia, Latin America and the Middle East have a sharply higher percentage of assets parked in stocks, just at a time when trade tensions threaten to derail markets.
Retirement money managers in 14 geographies now allocate 40 per cent of their assets to equities, an 8 percentage-point climb over the past five years, according to a Mercer survey released last week that canvassed government, corporate and mandatory pension funds with almost $5 trillion in assets under management. That compares with about 25 per cent for pension funds in Europe.
The escalating trade spat between the US and China has heightened fears that stocks are ripe for a downturn. With tensions mounting and outcomes driven more by politics than economics, the S&P 500 Index will be on course for a “full-scale bear market” without Federal Reserve interest-rate cuts, Citigroup’s global macro strategy team said earlier this week.
The increased allocation to equities by growth-market pension funds has come at the expense of fixed-income investments, which declined 11 percentage points over the five years, according to the survey.
Hong Kong funds have the highest exposure to equities at 66 per cent, although that’s been relatively stable over the period. Japan’s equity allocation jumped 13 percentage points while South Korea’s increased 8 percentage points.
The money managers are also directing a higher portion of their funds to assets outside of their home countries. On average, foreign stocks now account for 49 per cent of respondents’ equity investments, 4 percentage points higher than five years ago, while foreign fixed-income exposure climbed 7 percentage points to 23 per cent. Funds in Japan, South Korea, Malaysia and Taiwan are among those seeking greater diversification in stocks and fixed income.
• Bloomberg
Dubai Bling season three
Cast: Loujain Adada, Zeina Khoury, Farhana Bodi, Ebraheem Al Samadi, Mona Kattan, and couples Safa & Fahad Siddiqui and DJ Bliss & Danya Mohammed
Rating: 1/5
Sole survivors
- Cecelia Crocker was on board Northwest Airlines Flight 255 in 1987 when it crashed in Detroit, killing 154 people, including her parents and brother. The plane had hit a light pole on take off
- George Lamson Jr, from Minnesota, was on a Galaxy Airlines flight that crashed in Reno in 1985, killing 68 people. His entire seat was launched out of the plane
- Bahia Bakari, then 12, survived when a Yemenia Airways flight crashed near the Comoros in 2009, killing 152. She was found clinging to wreckage after floating in the ocean for 13 hours.
- Jim Polehinke was the co-pilot and sole survivor of a 2006 Comair flight that crashed in Lexington, Kentucky, killing 49.
COPA DEL REY
Semi-final, first leg
Barcelona 1 (Malcom 57')
Real Madrid (Vazquez 6')
Second leg, February 27
History's medical milestones
1799 - First small pox vaccine administered
1846 - First public demonstration of anaesthesia in surgery
1861 - Louis Pasteur published his germ theory which proved that bacteria caused diseases
1895 - Discovery of x-rays
1923 - Heart valve surgery performed successfully for first time
1928 - Alexander Fleming discovers penicillin
1953 - Structure of DNA discovered
1952 - First organ transplant - a kidney - takes place
1954 - Clinical trials of birth control pill
1979 - MRI, or magnetic resonance imaging, scanned used to diagnose illness and injury.
1998 - The first adult live-donor liver transplant is carried out
