UAE: 34,836 Covid vaccine doses administered in 24 hours

The UAE has administered 34,836 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 22 million.

This takes the rate of doses to 222.92 doses per 100 people.

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The Omicron variant of the coronavirus can partially evade the protection from two doses of Pfizer Inc and partner BioNTech's Covid-19 vaccine, the research head of a laboratory at the Africa Health Research Institute in South Africa said on Tuesday.

Still, the study showed that blood from people who had received two doses of the vaccine and had a prior infection were mostly able to neutralise the variant, suggesting that booster doses of the vaccine could help to fend off infection.

Alex Sigal, a professor at the Africa Health Research Institute, said on Twitter there was "a very large drop" in neutralisation of the Omicron variant relative to an earlier strain of Covid-19.

However, future pandemics could be even more lethal than Covid-19 so the lessons learned from the outbreak must not be squandered and the world should ensure it is prepared for the next viral onslaught, one of the creators of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine said.

The novel coronavirus has claimed the lives of 5.26 million people across the world, according to Johns Hopkins University, wiped out trillions of dollars in economic output and turned life upside down for billions of people.

• Dubai