Dubai plans to start a free inoculating campaign from Wednesday using the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer Inc. and its German partner company, BioNTech SE.
“Extensive vaccination campaign against Covid-19 kicks off in Dubai on Wednesday,” the city’s media office tweeted. “Vaccination will use Pfizer-BioNTech’s vaccine and is free of charge.”
Pfizer and BioNTech had said that the final data of the Phase 3 clinical trials shows that the vaccine is 95 per cent effective against coronavirus disease. Britain was the first country to roll out Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine followed by Canada, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Singapore and the US.
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has been conducting clinical trials on China’s state-backed coronavirus vaccine and earlier this month said that the shot has protected 86 per cent of people against coronavirus. The country has diagnosed over 195,000 people suffering with coronavirus disease since the start of the pandemic. It has reported more than a thousand positive cases a day for last two months after they dropped to as low as 164 cases in August. According to data from Johns Hopkins, the UAE has a case-fatality rate of 0.3 per cent, among the lowest globally.