CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt on Thursday received 1.6 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine produced by Pfizer as a gift from the United States as part of the COVAX initiative, the first batch of a total of 5 million doses, the country's health ministry said in a statement.

Egypt has been quickly accumulating a stock of vaccines for its population of over 100 million, having already received vaccines produced by AstraZeneca, Sinopharm, Sputnik, Johnson & Johnson, as well as Sinovac, which it is also producing locally.

Germany supplied a total of 2.3 million doses to Egypt over two days last week, the Egyptian health ministry said.

The COVAX facility, backed by the World Health Organization and the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI), has delivered over 301 million COVID-19 vaccine doses to 142 countries.