UAE: 19,694 Covid vaccine doses administered in 24 hours

The UAE has administered 19,694 doses of the Covid-19 vaccine in the past 24 hours.

The country's Ministry of Health and Prevention (MoHAP) said the total doses administered now stand at 21.8 million.

This takes the rate of doses to 220.4 per 100 people.

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• New Covid variant: South Africa questions UK flight ban amid global alarm

Britain said on Friday that a newly identified coronavirus variant spreading in South Africa was considered by scientists to be the most significant one yet found and so it needed to ascertain whether or not it made vaccines ineffective.

Defending a ban on flights from South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Lesotho and Eswatini, Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said that the lesson of Covid was that early action was essential.

The UK Health Security Agency said that the variant - called B.1.1.529 - has a spike protein that was dramatically different to the one in the original coronavirus that Covid-19 vaccines are based on.

Meanwhile, a recent large-scale study of five different immunisation shots showed that the Moderna Inc. and Russian Sputnik V Covid-19 vaccines both edged the version from Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE in effectiveness.

Hungarian researchers found that Moderna's vaccine was 88.7 per cent effective in protecting against coronavirus infection and 93.6 per cent effective against Covid-related death, compared with 85.7 per cent and 95.4 per cent, respectively, for Sputnik.

Pfizer came in third, scoring 83.3 per cent and 90.6 per cent, respectively, according to the paper published on the Clinical Microbiology and Infection medical journal website.

The research reviewed five vaccines' effectiveness in people at least seven days after they received their second dose. Data from more than 3.7 million vaccinated people over 16 were examined from January to June this year.

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• Abu Dhabi