ABU DHABI, 3 June – The United Arab Emirates reached a crucial point in its fight against the COVID-19 pandemic by announcing that “100 per cent of the target groups in the country” are now fully vaccinated.
The National Emergency Crisis Management Authority in the UAE (NCEMA) said that its national vaccination campaign had reached its goal with 24,922,054 vaccine doses administered to date.
The UAE national news agency (WAM) said that the campaign aimed to vaccinate and immunise frontliners, volunteers, community members of the age groups specified according to the type of vaccine, the elderly and individuals with chronic diseases whose health condition allows them to take the vaccine.
This comes after an earlier announcement in November 2021 when the national health authorities said that 100 per cent of eligible people had received their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.
In his latest media briefing, Dr Taher Al-Buraik Al-Amiri, spokesperson for the NCEMA said that UAE remains on the right track to overcome the coronavirus pandemic.
However, he stressed the need to abide by safety measures and reminded people to continue wearing face masks when required and isolate in case of infection.
On Thursday, UAE recorded 575 new cases of COVID-19, the highest daily toll in three months. However, this remains significantly lower than the 3,000 daily cases reported in January.
Since January 2020, UAE has recorded over 908,000 cases of COVID-19 with 2,305 deaths until 2 June 2022, and on 9 December 2020 it approved the Sinopharm COVID vaccine for use. Pfizer-BioNTech’s vaccine was also approved for use two weeks later for people over the age of 18.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, UAE has been among the leading countries in the world in terms of the number of tests per 1000 people, as the country performed 162,937,439 tests as of 3 June 2022.
In October 2021, UAE was ranked third in the world after Ireland and Spain in a league table looking at how well countries are controlling the coronavirus while at the same time reopening their economies.
Source: Agencies
