Labworx

The UAE leads the way in terms of the percentage of its population which could be covered by the number of vaccines that it has administered. According to the stats provided by Bloomberg’s COVID-19 tracker, the UAE has given 15.6 million doses of a viable vaccine to its citizens, which is sufficient to cover 72.4% of the population.

Indeed, other metrics also demonstrate how admirably the UAE is performing. It is top of the leader board in terms of first doses administered, while it’s second only to Malta (which has a far smaller population) with regard to the percentage of its citizens who are now fully inoculated against the coronavirus.

Leading the way

Since the outbreak of the pandemic in December 2019, the UAE moved quickly to safeguard its population and plan for the future. Not only did the government limit case rates, hospitalisations and deaths by implementing robust lockdown policies, but they also undertook a rigorous sterilisation and cleaning procedure for all outdoor spaces susceptible to contamination by the disease.

Meanwhile, the Emirati authorities also poured significant resources into uncovering recent developments in COVID-19 research and prioritised the inoculation of their entire populace as a matter of urgency. That meant that the country was one of the first to approve and administer vaccine candidates, giving its first jab to a patient on December 14th, 2020 – just six days behind the UK, which was the very first nation to do so.

Supply lines have been kept plentiful throughout the vaccination drive by approving several different candidates at once; at present, the Pfizer/BioNTech, AstraZeneca, Sinopharm and Sputnik V vaccines are in circulation in the UAE, while Moderna was recently given the greenlight as well.

Impressive performance

All of this has helped to ensure that the UAE is a world leader in terms of vaccine administrations, having given 15.6 million shots to date. That’s enough to cover 72.4% of the population, while the New York Times reports that 75% Emiratis have received at least one dose, which is more than any other nation in the world. The

UAE’s nearest rivals are Iceland (with 73% of the population receiving their first dose), Malta (72%), Canada (69%), Chile and the UK (both 68%).

In terms of full vaccination, the UAE records a very respectable second place behind Malta, having given two doses of the vaccine to 65% of its populace compared to Malta’s 67%. Clearly, the Emirati authorities are doing something right.

However, it should be remembered that Malta has a total population of around 443,000 and has distributed approximately 685,000 doses of the vaccine to date. By contrast, the UAE’s population is far bigger at 9.16 million, while its efforts to inoculate its citizens and reach herd immunity have involved the administration of more than 22 times the number of doses that Malta has given.

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