UAE, Bahrain lead vaccination rates after early start

Dubai, Jan 10 (efe-epa).- The United Arab Emirates and Bahrain have joined Israel on top of the world’s vaccination rate list thanks to their early approval of Sinopharm’s coronavirus vaccine.

UAE and Bahrain’s vaccination rates stand at 10.32 and 4.32 percent, respectively.

Both Gulf countries remain well behind Israel’s 20 percent vaccination rate, according to OurWorldinData.org, which gathers official data issued by each country.

But they are much higher than their closest chasers; the United States and the United Kingdom (2.02 and 1.94 percent respectively), according to the source.

The key behind the advantage both countries have lies in the fact that they were weeks ahead of others in kicking off their vaccination program after approving the vaccine developed by the Chinese state-run Sinopharm pharmaceutical group.

Sinopharm’s drug has the highest efficacy rate among the vaccines approved in European countries and the United States.

These countries, however, have not authorized the Chinese vaccine because Sinopharm has not published the results of third phase trials.

The data could therefore not be endorsed by independent scientific publications.

UAE and Bahrain, who participated in the trial phase, approved the vaccine before China.

UAE’s voluntary vaccination campaign began on 9 December with Bahrain following a week later, before China had given the first approval for its commercialization, 31 December.