Friday 04 / July / 2025
Muscat: 30 per cent of Oman’s population will be given the coronavirus vaccine by the end of June, and 70 per cent by the end of 2021, a member of the Supreme Committee to deal with COVID-19 has said.
Dr Mohammed bin Saif Al Hosani, the Undersecretary for Health Affairs at the Ministry of Health, said these plans had been made under the country’s national strategic vaccination plan.
“We aim to receive 5.4 million doses of the vaccine by the end of this year,” he said, speaking to Oman TV. “The country will immunise 30 per cent of the population by the end of June 2021, and 70 per cent by the end of this year.”
“91,000 people in the country have already received the vaccinations – this constitutes 57 per cent of our target groups,” he said. “Around 30,000 people have received both doses, and 60,000 have been given a single dose so far.”
The undersecretary said that the vaccination plan and the national strategy to stop the spread of COVID-19 were proceeding satisfactorily under the current conditions, owing to abundant availability of vaccines. He added, however, that according to a survey conducted by the Ministry of Health last December, about 20 to 25 per cent of Oman’s population was infected with COVID-19.
Explaining that Oman was among the strictest countries when it came to selecting vaccinations for its people, Al Hosani revealed, “For us to select a vaccine, it must be registered with international monitoring authorities. The vaccines we use are safe and very effective in preventing people from entering intensive care: all indicators point to this.”
To date, the country has signed contracts to obtain 3.02 million doses of vaccines from multiple manufacturers: Pfizer, AstraZeneca, and Johnson & Johnson’s. Negotiations with other companies will be made once they have reached the minimum requirements acceptable by international bodies.
“We hope getting vaccines will become easier by the end of the summer,” said Al Hosani. “The vaccines will be made widely available by summer 2021, and we have extended the time between which both doses are given to people to 10 weeks.”
The undersecretary went on to say that according to the agreement Oman has with GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance, it is hoped that more vaccine doses will reach the country by the end of this month. The contract with GAVI is for a million doses, but no more than 75,000 are expected to arrive in March.
“We hope we will have a total of a quarter of a million doses arrive to us by the end of this March, and this is expected to increase in April,” explained Al Hosani, who also went on to dismiss the reported connection between blood clots being seen in some people who had been injected with the AstraZeneca version of the COVID vaccine.”
“All the vaccines are safe,” he said. “Those who have been infected with the coronavirus have to be vaccinated, because according to scientific studies, they do not have enough immunity to fight the disease on their own.”
Dr Mohammed Al Hosani also said the Sultanate is looking into launching a COVID-19 health passport to make it easier for vaccine recipients to travel between countries.
“We expect to return to a semi-normal state of life by the end of 2021, according to the indicators, but for that to happen, everyone must observe and adhere to the preventive and precautionary measures to help stop the virus,” he explained.
