Dubai is offering the Pfizer vaccine to residents for free in addition to China’s Sinopharm shot

Dubai is offering the Pfizer vaccine to residents for free in addition to China’s Sinopharm shot

A traveler passes through immigration control by walking through a "smart tunnel " at Dubai International Airport.GIUSEPPE CACACE/AFPThe United Arab Emirates' commercial capital Dubai is making the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine available to its residents for free as of Wednesday, its government has announced. The news comes after the UAE began offering the Chinese-developed Sinopharm vaccine earlier this month.The emirate's first batch of the Pfizer vaccines, which were found to be 95% effective in late-stage clinical trials, landed at Dubai International Airport late Tuesday night from Brussels.An official Covid-19 vaccination campaign is now underway in the Middle Eastern country, and that campaign "will see the Dubai Health Authority providing the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccination, which has recently been approved for use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and registered by the UAE Ministry of Health and Prevention," the Dubai Media Office said in a statement. A medical worker, wearing disposable gloves, measures the temperature of a man at a coronavirus drive-through screening center on April 1, 2020 in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.Francois Nel | Getty ImagesThe first phase of the rollout will see four main groups targeted, with the first group including Emiratis and residents aged 60 and older, people with chronic