Beyond the Headlines: How Abu Dhabi’s Hope Consortium is helping to vaccinate the world

Although hundreds of millions of doses have been administered so far, the planet's population is more than 7.5 billion

On December 31, 2020, one year after the novel coronavirus was first detected, the World Health Organisation gave the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine emergency validation, making it the first to become available to the general public. It was just seven months after the vaccine's trials began – a record-breaking development time. Other vaccines followed. AstraZeneca, Moderna, Sinopharm, Sputnik V and Johnson & Johnson are now household names. Hundreds of millions of doses of these vaccines have been administered worldwide. But with more than 7.5 billion people on Earth, and with most types requiring two shots, we still have a long way to go. On this week's Beyond the Headlines, host Suhail Akram looks at how we vaccinate the world.

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  A 19,000 square metre temperature-controlled warehouse facility in Khalifa Industrial Zone, Abu Dhabi, is key to the global fight against Covid-19. Courtesy: Abu Dhabi Ports

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  Abu Dhabi’s Hope Consortium has the capacity to deliver enough Covid-19 vaccines for almost everyone on the planet. Reuters

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  A shipment of UAE aid to tackle Covid-19 in Cuba is loaded on to an Etihad cargo aircraft. Wam

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  The Hope Consortium stores and distributes Covid-19 vaccines across the world. Courtesy: Hope Consortium