Daijiworld Media Network - Jeddah (MS)
Jeddha, Dec 19: According to a government health official of Saudi Arabia, more than 60 percent of nationals and expatriate population are eager to take the Pfizer-NioNTech vaccine for coronavirus pandemic.
In an interview with Al Arabiya, Dr Abudullah Asiri, deputy minister for preventive medicine said that a survey that was conducted by the health ministry has confirmed that more than 60 percent of Saudis and expatriate population are okay with receiving the vaccine for Covid-19 and they also feel that it is the best solution to put an end to the ongoing crisis.
Dr Abdullah also said that right from the beginning of the pandemic in the gulf nation, both the nationals and expatriate population cooperated well with the authorities and it has helped the administration immensely in keeping the ill effects of the pandemic under control.
Ministry of health of the kingdom confirmed that more than three lac people registered to be vaccinated as of Friday December 18.
Dr Abdullah said that people are sick and tired of the pandemic and would like it to end soon. That is why they would like to receive the vaccine soon. The vaccination will be given from an inoculation center in Riyadh which has 600 beds and includes 550 clinics on its premises and a team of 100 health care practitioners.
According to Dr Tawfiq Al-Rabiah, it is common for people to resist any new vaccine in the beginning stages out of fear. He said that if we see history, people resisted even the smallpox vaccine when it started, but eventually agreed and the disease got eradicated.
Vaccination centers will also be established in other cities as per the health ministry, which will enable scores of people to receive vaccinations every day.
In the meantime, the kingdom reported 10 deaths related to Covid-19, bringing the total tally to 6,101. The number of new infections was 174, which brought the tally to 3,60,573. At present, there are 3,016 active cases in the nation, out of which 436 are said to be critical.
Riyadh reported 47 new cases, while the figures for Makkah and Madina stood at 36 and 28 respectively. The number of recovered people was 208, putting the total number of recoveries in the kingdom at 3,51,573.
So far, 10.57 million PCR tests are done in the country, out of which in the last 24 hours itself, 42,448 are carried out.