Dr Abdullatif Al Khal
Doha: Qatar aims to vaccinate at least 90 percent of the eligible population by the end of the year and has taken several initiatives to boost the national COVID-19 vaccination campaign, said a senior official.
“We aim to cover about 90 percent of the eligible population before the end of the year,” said Chair of the National Health Strategic Group on COVID-19 and Head of Infectious Diseases at Hamad Medical Corporation Dr Abdullatif Al Khal.
He said that this will be implemented while taking effective public health measures, like screening and isolating people suspected to have or exposed to COVID-19.
Dr Al Khal was speaking at ‘An Injection of Hope: Do Vaccines Mean an End to the Pandemic Is in Sight?’ as part of the latest edition of Education City Speaker Series, and in collaboration with the World Innovation Summit for Health (WISH), which featured healthcare experts and practitioners to discuss vaccine development, questions surrounding the new variants of COVID-19, and the efforts needed to combat and avoid future waves of infection.
Dr Al Khal said that several steps have been taken to widen and boost the ability of the COVID-19 vaccination campaign.
“27 health centers throughout the country provide vaccine to people seven days a week from 7am to 11pm. In addition we recently open the vaccination centre at the Qatar National Convention Centre, which can deliver 8,000 doses a day,” said Dr. Al Khal.
“We also trained nurses at different ministries and entities to administer vaccine. Now they are vaccinating their frontliners at their own facilities,” he added.
In a another move, today the Ministry of Health has started an initiative to visit homes of the elderly, who cannot make it to the health centres and administrate the vaccine to them and to their family members.
“So, hope this will help change the mind of the elderly people and their family members,” said Dr. Al Khal.
He also emphasized on the fact the Qatar was pro-active in working with the COVID-19 vaccine manufactures. According to Dr Khal Qatar is part of the global initiative, COVAX, formed nine months ago to ensure fair and equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines for every country.
Speaking about the challenges faced during the COVID-19 vaccination campaign Dr Al Khal said that initially the widespread misinformation about vaccine safety, that circulated widely through the social media made a significant portion of people being reluctant to take the vaccine.
“We established a group to spread evidence-based information and community figures to get the message across,” said Dr. Al Kahl.
Dr. Al Kahl said that the National COVID-19 vaccination campaign and its method of implementation can be adopted by other countries as a model.
