DUBAI, United Arab Emirates – According to the country’s health authorities, the United Arab Emirates is on its way to having half the population vaccinated against the coronavirus before a deadline.
The small desert sheikh of 10 million started deploying its vaccination campaign to the public towards the end of last year, after China’s Sinopharm vaccine was made available to health workers and government officials from September. In terms of vaccination rates, the UAE’s national program is now the second highest in the world after Israel.
More than 1.8 million people have already received the Sinopharm vaccine, which is available free of charge to all citizens and residents. This is more than doubling the vaccination rate per capita in the US. The American and German-developed Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is being rolled out in Dubai, currently in the first phase reserved for people over 60, those with pre-existing health conditions, and front-line workers.
On January 13, 2021, a health worker shows off a dose of China’s Sinopharm Covid-19 vaccine at a vaccination center in the Jordanian capital, Amman.
Khalil Mazraawi | AFP | Getty Images
Both vaccines require two stab wounds 28 days apart, and 28 days after receiving the second admission, patients no longer need to be quarantined but still have to wear masks and take social distance, the country’s national emergency and emergency authority said. disaster management said. said
And while taking the vaccine is optional, NCEMA says, it is strongly encouraged. Government employees in Abu Dhabi who choose not to take any of the vaccines should take a PCR test every two weeks.
“We are very pleased with the progress we have made,” Omar Ghobash, UAE’s Assistant Secretary of Culture and Public Diplomacy, told CNBC’s Hadley Gamble on Sunday. “Of course there are people who are still getting sick and sadly deceased, but overall we think we have managed to find the balance between health and safety on the one hand and economic viability on the other.”
Sinopharm’s developers believe the vaccine is 86% effective, while the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine is 95% effective, although some medical professions have expressed skepticism about the Chinese-made vaccine due to the lack of published data on development and trials. In November, UAE leaders, including Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, the Dubai ruler, tweeted images of themselves getting the Sinopharm shot.
Vaccinations continue amid increase in cases
Cases have risen in the Gulf country in less than three weeks since the end of December when tourists flocked to Dubai’s fully open beaches, restaurants and shopping malls. Despite visitors requiring a negative PCR test result before boarding or on arrival, many suspect that a more transmissible type of virus first identified in the UK is at least partly to blame, given the large amount British tourists in the emirate for the holiday season.
The increase in cases – which now averaged more than 3,000 a day compared to about 1,000 a day at the end of December – has led the UK to remove the United Arab Emirates from its ‘safe haven’, even if many travelers in the UK are banned over fear of the new virus strain. The UAE has successfully kept its case for the whole of 2020 below 2000 per day.
The United Arab Emirates has registered 256,732 confirmed cases of coronavirus and 751 deaths, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. On Sunday, there were 3,453 daily records.
Female sunbathers sit on a beach in the Gulf Emirate of Dubai on July 24, 2020, while the Burj al-Arab hotel is seen from behind. After a painful four-month tourism shutdown that ended earlier in July, Dubai considers itself a safe destination with the means to ward off coronavirus.
KARIM SAHIB | AFP via Getty Images
Yet it appears that the party city and the local commercial capital of Dubai will in any case continue its vaccination campaign in future, while keeping its tourism-dependent economy open.
The neighboring country, the capital of Abu Dhabi, has meanwhile been much more conservative and over the course of a few days required a series of negative PCR test results for everyone who wants to enter the emirate – even from other emirates in the country.
As for Dubai, machine must carry in all public places except activities such as eating or doing strenuous exercise, and the authorities remind residents of social distance. The openness of the emirate, which has been steadily increasing since the summer, followed a period of one of the most severe exclusions in the world in March and April.
By the new year, the Dubai government has allowed residents to hold up to 30 people gatherings in their homes. Hotels that were once almost empty have a higher occupancy rate of 70% as tourists escape from their own countries for a sense of normalcy and warm weather.
“They are balancing personal responsibility with an economy that needs to continue,” Ghobash said of the country.
The NCEMA tweeted earlier this month to vaccinate the largest possible percentage of society, in order to “gain access to the immunity from vaccination, which will help reduce the number of cases and control the disease.”