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Two thirds of eligible people in Dubai fully vaccinated against COVID-19

June 13, 2021 at 11:56 am

A man waits for his test results at a testing center at the Dubai-Abu Dhabi border on August 10, 2020 in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates [Francois Nel/Getty Images]

About two-thirds of people eligible for inoculation against COVID-19 have now received two doses of the vaccine in Dubai, the tourist and business hub of the United Arab Emirates, Dubai Health Authority (DHA) said, reports Reuters.

Dubai is the most populous of the seven emirates that make up the UAE and has one of the world’s busiest airports.

For six months the UAE has been running one of the world’s fastest vaccination campaigns against COVID-19, initially using a vaccine developed by the China National Pharmaceutical Group (Sinopharm) and then adding the Pfizer/BioNTech and AstraZeneca shots and Russia’s Sputnik V.

DHA deputy director-general Alawi Alsheikh Ali told Dubai Television late on Saturday that 83% of people aged over 16 – or about 2.3 million people – had now received at least one dose of a vaccine and that 64% had received two doses in the emirate.

The UAE recently said nearly 85% of its total eligible population had received at least one dose of a vaccine, without saying how many people had had both doses.

READ: Dubai tourism falls by 67% in first quarter compared with same period last year

The UAE, which does not break down the number of cases by emirate, has seen a rise in the number of infections in the past month. It recorded 2,281 new cases on Saturday, bringing the total so far to around 596,000 cases. Daily cases peaked at almost 4,000 a day in early February.

DHA said 90% of the COVID-19 patients admitted to intensive care units in Dubai hospitals were unvaccinated, without specifying when that statistic was recorded.