People in UAE gear up for vaccination, set appointments in advance

 

People in the United Arab Emirates have shown their trust in vaccines approved by the UAE authorities last year in December. They have line up to get vaccine shots by booking the slots in advance.

The healthcare facilities that have been selected to offer Covid-19 vaccination services are booked for the whole week. Even spots on waiting lists are only available after a week. Apart from this, medical centres are also booked till March.

There is a surge of people looking to get vaccinated in the UAE and this is after authorities have run several campaigns promoting the vaccination drive and also awaring people about the safety and efficacy of both the vaccines--Sinopharm’s inactivated vaccine and Pfizer-- that are approved in the emirati nation.

A report in the National revealed that call centres, which were supposed to handle enquiries regarding the vaccination procedure and bookings, have been receiving hundreds of requests on a daily basis. Most of these calls are seeking online links for registration.

Despite the surge, government run vaccination centres are welcoming people and asking them to get their shots for vaccines as fast as possible. The Sinopharm vaccine has been designated as the national vaccine and is available for free of cost across the country in healthcare centres, majlis and other private clinics.

This was further confirmed in the report by a leading daily, which said that after contacting several private health centres it was found that slts were booked till January 20 while for others, there was no slot till March.

The medical director at Bareen International Hospital in Mohamed bin Zayed City, Dr Ramzi Alshaiba, said that the demand for vaccines saw a surge last month. He added, “When we started the vaccination programme on December 13 at Bareen, we were only seeing 100 to 200 patients per day, on average.”

He further said that in the last two days, the staff from the hospital managed to administer vaccines to as many as 1,200 people on a per day basis. The hospital is controlling the population, which has come to get vaccinated, by installing a tent outside the hospital. This is where all the people line-up.