The Tunisian presidency announced Monday that it had received 1,000 doses of coronavirus vaccines from the United Arab Emirates.

The vaccines will be distributed to military medicine services.

The official in charge of communication in the Presidency of the Republic, Reem Kassem, told AFP that the doses are "a gift that the UAE sent to the Tunisian presidency, and President Qais Saeed refused to receive the vaccination, as no member of his family or employees in the presidency was vaccinated."

Agence France-Presse contacted the spokesperson for the Ministry of Defense, who did not provide any details about the type of vaccine or ts date of arrival. 

The Tunisian government delayed the vaccination campaign that was scheduled for mid-February to March, pending the arrival of quantities of vaccines within the UN-sponsored COVAX mechanism.

Friday, Tunisia announced that it would receive 100,000 doses of the vaccine, in the form of a donation from China, without specifying the name of the vaccine and the date of its arrival.

Activists on social media have criticized the delay in the arrival of the vaccine in Tunisia, and accused the political class of mismanagement.

Tunisia lags behind Morocco and Algeria, which began vaccination campaigns in late January with the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine and Sputnik-V vaccines.

Tunisia, which has a population of 11.7 million, has recorded more than 231,000 cases of Coronavirus since the outbreak began, which resulted in more than 8,000 deaths, according to Ministry of Health figures.