Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and top Saudi officials have begun receiving their first dose of the Coronavirus vaccine, imported to the Kingdom earlier this month and rolled out on December 17th, according to the Saudi Press Agency.
Wearing a black thobe with his left arm bare to receive the shot, the Crown Prince made a point to ensure that the procedure was filmed and broadcast on Saudi television so that his fellow citizens and residents could see that he was getting it, and to demonstrate that it was safe for them to use, too. The video immediately went viral across social networks, and the Crown Prince’s decision to film the vaccination appeared to work: more than 700,000 have now registered in Saudi Arabia to receive the vaccine, according to the Kingdom’s health ministry.
HRH Crown Prince Receives 1st Dose of Coronavirus (COVID-19) Vaccine.https://t.co/Q0STBAIUqF#SPAGOV pic.twitter.com/X5Dgt1PmLK
— SPAENG (@Spa_Eng) December 25, 2020
The dose is the first of two to be administered to the Crown Prince and other top officials. Both the Moderna and the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines require two shots: a priming dose, followed by a booster shot. The interval between Moderna doses is 28 days; for the Pfizer vaccine, it’s 21 days.
Saudi Arabia’s health minister Tawfiq Al-Rabiah also received the vaccine on Friday, and applauded Prince Mohammed “for his keenness and ongoing follow-up to provide vaccines to citizens and residents,” the report said. Al-Rabiah referred to the campaign as a “prevention is better than cure” policy, which is “represented by intensifying proactive precautionary measures, emphasizing that human health is first, providing safe and internationally recognized vaccines, in record time, and presenting the vaccines to citizens and residents, alike,” the press agency reported.
The Kingdom announced nine deaths from the COVID-19 disease and 154 new infections on Sunday.
The coronavirus pandemic has affected over 79.5 million people globally and the death toll has exceeded 1.74 million.
