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Arab countries announced plans to distribute the Corona vaccine to their residents for free, after their governments approved the use of vaccines from various sources.
The Bahrain News Agency released a statement on Thursday evening, stating that “a safe and free vaccine will be provided to all citizens and residents within Bahrain.”
Bahrain intends to vaccinate all people over the age of 18 through 27 health institutions, hoping to reach a vaccination rate of 10,000 people per day, according to a report by the American Associated Press.
Bahrain announced a week ago that it was the second country in the world to receive an emergency permit to use the Pfizer vaccine, while the United Kingdom was the first country.
Earlier Thursday, the Saudi Food and Drug Authority announced that it had approved the Pfizer vaccine, so that the Saudi authorities could import and use the vaccine.
Saudi Arabia said the approval was based on data provided by Pfizer, which says the vaccine’s effectiveness has reached 95 percent.
The “Associated Press” reported that the hot climate in the Middle East is a great challenge facing the company “Pfizer”, as the vaccine requires storage and shipping in extremely cold temperatures, around minus 70 degrees Celsius.
The Saudi Health Ministry plans to clarify the plan to distribute the vaccine to its population of 34 million.
The “Associated Press” indicated that Egypt had obtained on Thursday the first shipment of the Chinese vaccine, “Sinopharm”, from the United Arab Emirates.
On Friday, Egyptian Information Minister Osama Heikal confirmed that Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi issued a decision to grant the Corona vaccine to Egyptians for free, stating that the first payments will be given to the most vulnerable groups, like doctors.
In the UAE, the authorities recently announced that they had officially registered the Chinese company “Sinopharma” vaccine against the emerging corona virus, confirming that initial results showed its effectiveness of 86 percent.
The information indicates that the Ministry of Health initially contracted the importation of about one million doses of the Pfizer vaccine, one million 700 thousand doses of Moderna and 3 million doses of “Oxford-AstraZeneca”.
In Jordan, the Jordanian Ministry of Health recently announced that it expects to receive vaccines in the first quarter of next year and aims to target vaccination to 20 to 25 percent of the kingdom’s population of more than 10 million people.
In Morocco and Algeria, the authorities announced the adoption of free vaccination against the Corona virus, for all citizens.
In Lebanon, the Ministry of Health announced a few days ago that it had seized some two million vaccines produced by the US company Pfizer, which are expected to arrive in the first quarter of 2021.
