Abu Dhabi is offering a variety of booster jabs to those who have already been fully vaccinated, in a bid to boost their immunity level against COVID-19 infection.
However, this booster dose can only be taken after six months of the last vaccine jab. Abu Dhabi residents can take the Pfizer-BioNTech booster vaccine at any of the Mubadala Health vaccination centres in the emirate, officials said, adding that any fully vaccinated person who has received both jabs of the Sinopharm vaccine, will be allowed to take Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine as a third shot.
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This decision was announced barely days after the launch of a booster dose of the Sinopharm vaccine via a walk-in facility, a Mubadala Health spokesperson told a local UAE daily.
Health experts in the emirate also supported the measure with their recommendations to the public to take the booster dose to increase immunity levels. Dr. Mahesh Nethravalkar, head of the department and specialist pulmonologist, NMC Specialty Hospital, Al Ain, said taking booster doses helped increase immunity levels against the coronavirus, a measure that is both critical and important to help curb the virus.
Aster Hospital Mankhool’s Dr. Jyoti Upadhyay who works as an internal medicine specialist said that vaccines don’t offer ‘life-long protection’, and highlighted that the booster dose is a highly-proactive step that several countries are now considering to effectively prevent the deadly new variants that are being detected globally. She furthered that mixing of vaccines could be done safely — since there was no immunological reason against it – and that it would even help boost human immunity response against other corona virus variants. (AW)
