MUSCAT  

Oman has announced that it will begin rolling out its coronavirus vaccination campaign from Sunday.

The official Oman News Agency (ONA) reported on Saturday that the Sultanate will kick-start its COVID-19 vaccination campaign with the vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech prioritizing the most vulnerable groups including frontline workers, people with chronic diseases, and the elderly.

It will thus become the sixth Arab country and the last one in the Gulf to begin vaccination.

According to ONA, the first shipment of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine arrived in the Sultanate’s Muscat International Airport.

So far, eight Arab countries including all six Gulf states have received the vaccines.

The other two Arab countries are Morocco and Sudan.

Five of them, all Gulf states - the UAE, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Qatar, have already launched their vaccination campaigns.

There has been a surge in COVID-19 cases and fatalities in Arab countries with Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Palestine announcing more fatalities linked to the novel coronavirus on Saturday.

*Ibrahim Mukhtar contributed to this report from Ankara