Dubai to Start Offering Free Pfizer BioNTech COVID Vaccine Shots

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Dubai plans to begin a free inoculation campaign from Wednesday, 23 December, employing the vaccine candidate developed by Pfizer BioNTech.

The city’s media office tweeted, “Extensive vaccination campaign against COVID-19 kicks off in Dubai on Wednesday.” Adding that the “vaccination will use Pfizer-BioNTech’s vaccine and is free of charge.”

Pfizer and BioNTech have informed their vaccine is 95 percent effective in preventing the illness, Hindustan Times reported.

The United Arab Emirates, which has been conducting vaccine trials on China’s state-backed candidate, said that the shot protected 86 percent of people against COVID-19.

The UAE has diagnosed over 195,000 people with the virus since the beginning of the pandemic. The Gulf nation, of which Dubai is a part, has been reporting more than a thousand cases a day for the past two months.

The country has one of the lowest fatality rates in the world, only 0.3 percent, according to data from Johns Hopkins.

(With inputs from Hindustan Times)