Related: How the UAE, Bahrain and Israel topped the global vaccine push
Vaccine take-up in the UAE is higher than initially forecast, adding to hopes that the country could hit a level of herd immunity soon.
Dr Farida Al Hosani, a federal health spokeswoman, gave her assessment at an online debate on Tuesday night.
“We are seeing good progress on a daily basis," she told the event, organised by the Atlantic Council think tank.
"We conducted a couple of surveys to see the acceptance of the community and based on this, we rolled out the campaign.
"We could see the level of acceptance from the beginning was good – higher than expected."
As of February 1, just under 35 doses had been administered for every 100 people – second only to Israel with 57.6 and followed by the UK at 14.4 and Bahrain at 9.6 doses per 100 people.
It is estimated that nearly one fifth of the country's population has received some protection against the virus.
The vaccine is entirely voluntary, but long queues were seen at walk-in vaccine centres, while there are waiting lists of several weeks for advance appointments.
The evident demand has encouraged officials to estimate that 50 per cent of the population could be vaccinated by late March.
There were local and global vaccine shortages, particularly of the Pfizer-BioNTech shots. But on Tuesday, 200,000 doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine arrived in Dubai from a vaccine lab in India, with more expected.
Dr Al Hosani said the government hopes to develop the country's drug-making abilities to manufacture its own vaccine doses in the near future.
As The National revealed last month, UAE authorities and Abu Dhabi medical company G42 secured a deal to make the Sinopharm vaccine under licence from China, although it will be some time before production is under way.
"We are not a vaccine manufacturer and we are building up capacity for future manufacturing of Covid-19 vaccine as well," Dr Al Hosani said.
“We are engaged in discussions with other countries on how to support with logistics parts of the vaccine as the UAE has strong infrastructure, strong international connectivity and storage facilities.
"We are already a regional centre for many pharmaceutical vaccines for commercial use."
Dr Al Hosani spoke to delegates and viewers alongside Dr Manaf Al Qahtani, from the Bahrain National Taskforce for Combating Coronavirus, and Dr Shoshy Goldberg, chief nursing officer from Israel's Ministry of Health.
She said the three countries had fared better than many major economies in tackling cases and introducing the vaccine.
Oxford-AstraZeneca shots arrive from India – in pictures
Paatal Lok season two
Directors: Avinash Arun, Prosit Roy
Stars: Jaideep Ahlawat, Ishwak Singh, Lc Sekhose, Merenla Imsong
Rating: 4.5/5
How to protect yourself when air quality drops
Install an air filter in your home.
Close your windows and turn on the AC.
Shower or bath after being outside.
Wear a face mask.
Stay indoors when conditions are particularly poor.
If driving, turn your engine off when stationary.
Iran's dirty tricks to dodge sanctions
There’s increased scrutiny on the tricks being used to keep commodities flowing to and from blacklisted countries. Here’s a description of how some work.
1 Going Dark
A common method to transport Iranian oil with stealth is to turn off the Automatic Identification System, an electronic device that pinpoints a ship’s location. Known as going dark, a vessel flicks the switch before berthing and typically reappears days later, masking the location of its load or discharge port.
2. Ship-to-Ship Transfers
A first vessel will take its clandestine cargo away from the country in question before transferring it to a waiting ship, all of this happening out of sight. The vessels will then sail in different directions. For about a third of Iranian exports, more than one tanker typically handles a load before it’s delivered to its final destination, analysts say.
3. Fake Destinations
Signaling the wrong destination to load or unload is another technique. Ships that intend to take cargo from Iran may indicate their loading ports in sanction-free places like Iraq. Ships can keep changing their destinations and end up not berthing at any of them.
4. Rebranded Barrels
Iranian barrels can also be rebranded as oil from a nation free from sanctions such as Iraq. The countries share fields along their border and the crude has similar characteristics. Oil from these deposits can be trucked out to another port and documents forged to hide Iran as the origin.
* Bloomberg
War
Director: Siddharth Anand
Cast: Hrithik Roshan, Tiger Shroff, Ashutosh Rana, Vaani Kapoor
Rating: Two out of five stars
India squad for fourth and fifth Tests
Kohli (c), Dhawan, Rahul, Shaw, Pujara, Rahane (vc), Karun, Karthik (wk), Pant (wk), Ashwin, Jadeja, Pandya, Ishant, Shami, Umesh, Bumrah, Thakur, Vihari
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Boyd Tonkin, Galileo Press
NYBL PROFILE
Company name: Nybl
Date started: November 2018
Founder: Noor Alnahhas, Michael LeTan, Hafsa Yazdni, Sufyaan Abdul Haseeb, Waleed Rifaat, Mohammed Shono
Based: Dubai, UAE
Sector: Software Technology / Artificial Intelligence
Initial investment: $500,000
Funding round: Series B (raising $5m)
Partners/Incubators: Dubai Future Accelerators Cohort 4, Dubai Future Accelerators Cohort 6, AI Venture Labs Cohort 1, Microsoft Scale-up
Omar Yabroudi's factfile
Born: October 20, 1989, Sharjah
Education: Bachelor of Science and Football, Liverpool John Moores University
2010: Accrington Stanley FC, internship
2010-2012: Crystal Palace, performance analyst with U-18 academy
2012-2015: Barnet FC, first-team performance analyst/head of recruitment
2015-2017: Nottingham Forest, head of recruitment
2018-present: Crystal Palace, player recruitment manager
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Killing of Qassem Suleimani
Profile
Name: Carzaty
Founders: Marwan Chaar and Hassan Jaffar
Launched: 2017
Employees: 22
Based: Dubai and Muscat
Sector: Automobile retail
Funding to date: $5.5 million
Tips to keep your car cool
- Place a sun reflector in your windshield when not driving
- Park in shaded or covered areas
- Add tint to windows
- Wrap your car to change the exterior colour
- Pick light interiors - choose colours such as beige and cream for seats and dashboard furniture
- Avoid leather interiors as these absorb more heat
South Africa squad
Faf du Plessis (captain), Hashim Amla, Temba Bavuma, Quinton de Kock (wicketkeeper), Theunis de Bruyn, AB de Villiers, Dean Elgar, Heinrich Klaasen (wicketkeeper), Keshav Maharaj, Aiden Markram, Morne Morkel, Wiaan Mulder, Lungi Ngidi, Vernon Philander and Kagiso Rabada.
MATCH INFO
Uefa Champions League semi-final, second leg result:
Ajax 2-3 Tottenham
Tottenham advance on away goals rule after tie ends 3-3 on aggregate
Final: June 1, Madrid
