The ongoing pandemic has disrupted many lives causing illness and severe mental traumas especially for the elderly and people with chronic diseases. To reduce the further spread, Qatar on Wednesday announced that the elderly and their close relatives will be vaccinated in their comfort zones without the need of stepping out of their homes. 

Qatar’s National Pandemic Preparedness Committee Chairman, Dr Abdullatif Al Khal expounded on the initiative of bringing vaccines home as he said, this is done in order to encourage all the elderly ones residing in Qatar and the region aims in vaccinating at least 90 percent of the eligible population by the year-end.

Dr Al Khal, who is also the appointed Head of Infectious Diseases at Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC) stated that, “We aim to cover up to 90 percent of the eligible population before the end of the year. This means we have to vaccinate more than 100,000 people a week. So this requires a lot of resources and this is happening at a time when we need to dedicate resources to fight the pandemic.” 

During the Education City Speaker Series Edition held in collaboration with World Innovation Summit for Health (WISH), Khalid said that the doses of vaccines has been provided to people at 27 different health centres across the region all day from 7 am to 11 pm. The Covid-19 vaccine headquarters in QNCC will be able to supply 8000 doses a day to 8000 people.

Dr. Khalil also added that, “This boosted our ability. We also trained nurses at different ministries and other government entities on vaccination like the Ministry of Defence, Ministry of Interior, oil and gas companies and Qatar Airways. Now, they are vaccinating their frontline workers at their own facility.”

An announcement was made on the exemption of quarantine to the fully vaccinated people in Qatar earlier this month, which was valid for the span of three months starting 14 days following the second dose of vaccination.

Dr Al Khal said this is a good start and upon further review of data, the exemption period could be extended to six months. He also said, “We based that decision on the available data of the duration of the protective level of antibodies in the blood following the second dose. But there is more emerging information in that the duration is probably longer. We hope that it would be at least a year or even more. We are reviewing the data as it emerges regularly even on daily and weekly basis and we are ready to extend this to six-month validity as soon as we know there is enough information to do that. Before the end of six months, we will do the same again and we will probably extend the validity.”