Covid-19 vaccine: UAE administers more than 5 million doses

The UAE has administered 5.005 million Covid-19 vaccine doses, official news agency WAM reported on Saturday.

The tally equates to a distribution rate of 50.61 doses per 100 people, and comes after a further 103,469 doses were given out on Saturday.

Crossing the five million marks comes as result of the efforts made at the country-level to contain the pandemic, the Ministry of Health and Prevention (MoHAP) announced.

The UAE currently ranks second in the world – after Israel – in terms of the cumulative Covid-19 vaccination doses administered per 100 people worldwide, according to stats shared by Our World in Data.

The UAE launched the National Vaccination Programme last year to ensure the vaccine’s availability in most government and private health establishments and centres with a focus on the elderly, people with chronic diseases and frontline workers.

The country aims to inoculate 50 per cent of the population during the first quarter of the year 2021.

The programme’s ultimate goal is to ensure acquired immunity across the nation to help curb the spread of the virus.

The UAE started rolling out China’s Sinopharm vaccine to the public in December and in January, also approved the Russian Covid-19 vaccine, Sputnik V, for emergency use.

Read: UAE approves Russian vaccine Sputnik for emergency use

Meanwhile Dubai also offers the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and earlier this month, approved the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine for select categories.

Read: Covid-19: Dubai approves use of AstraZeneca vaccine

MoHAP highlighted the growing demand for the vaccination among the general public. It also underlined the importance of the people continuing to stay committed to Covid-19 countermeasures, in order to safeguard society against new coronavirus strains.