The United Arab Emirates has announced it will begin offering booster shots to those who received the Chinese state-backed Sinopharm vaccine six months after vaccination. The brief statement comes after some in the UAE received a third shot amid concerns of a low antibody response from the vaccine. Last month, China’s top disease control official, in a rare acknowledgement, said current vaccines offer low protection against the coronavirus. The capital of Abu Dhabi extensively used Sinopharm, while the neighbouring emirate of Dubai began offering Pfizer-BioNTech and Oxford-Astrazeneca. The country had heavily relied on the Sinopharm shot to vaccinate its vast foreign labour force.

Source: Irish Independent May 18, 2021 16:07 UTC