Tribune News Network
Doha
Qatar has signed deals with both Pfizer and Moderna to procure their COVID-19 vaccines, a senior health official of the Ministry of Public Health has said
Dr. Hamad Eid Al Romaihi, the Head of Surveillance and Outbreak Control, Supreme Council of Health of Qatar, expects the first batch of an approved vaccine to arrive in Qatar within this year — the Pfizer candidate by the end of 2020 and the Moderna’s in the first half of 2021.
His comments come after drugmaker Moderna announced on Monday that its coronavirus vaccine was 94.5 percent effective, joining Pfizer as a front-runner in the global race to contain a raging pandemic.
Dr Romaihi said as per the agreement signed with Pfizer, Qatar will have priority in obtaining its vaccine.
The vaccine candidate developed by Pfizer in collaboration with BioNTech is said to be more than 90 percent effective against the novel coronavirus.
After the arrival of the first batch, the rest of the batches will reach Qatar successively in stages over the next year, and the bulk of it will arrive during the first half of 2021, he told Al-Rayyan TV in an interview aired on Monday.
Dr Romaihi said Pfizer had previously announced that it would produce 50 million doses of its vaccine candidate this year, and subsequently produce 1.3 billion doses the next year.
He said Moderna would produce 20 million doses this year but that is allocated entirely to the United States. The American administration will manufacture between 500 million to one billion doses during the next year, Dr Romaihi said, pointing out that as per the agreement with Moderna, Qatar will get the first batches of its vaccine in the first half of 2021.
