Dubai plans to vaccinate all eligible adults by the end of the year, as the Middle East business hub uses a variety of shots and movement restrictions to contain the coronavirus.
“We are planning for 100 percent of eligible adults by the end of the fourth quarter of this year,” Amer Sharif, the head of Dubai’s Covid-19 Command and Control Centre, told Bloomberg TV.
Daily cases in the United Arab Emirates, of which Dubai is a part, had quadrupled since November as the country opened up for travel and eased movement restrictions. Responding to the rise Dubai to reintroduces curbs on hotels and air travel.
On Saturday, the Ministry of Health revealed it had conducted 150,706 tests detected 3,276 new cases of coronavirus, a drop from recent highs, with 4,041 recoveries and 12 death cases due to complications.
While cases have jumped in recent months, the UAE has embraced an aggressive inoculation program. It has administered 4.2 million vaccine doses in a population of about 10 million, one of the highest rates of vaccinations per 100 people globally.
“The current approach for the country is we make available for the people whatever vaccines have been going through the clinical trials, and at the same time partner with different entities to enhance this industry,” Sharif said.
The UAE has approved shots developed by Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE, as well as China’s Sinopharm. It has also given Russia’s Sputnik vaccine authorisation for emergency use, while Dubai last week received the first shipment of AstraZeneca Plc-Oxford University vaccine from India.
For the UAE, the priority now lies in striking a balance. “We need to make sure we strike a balance between the numbers of cases but also the social wellbeing and economic wellbeing of our people,” Sharif said.
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