Kuwait City: A day after Kuwait announced that only vaccinated people can travel and enter the cinema, on Tuesday the Mishref fairground vaccination centre saw a huge turnout with around 22,000 people receiving the jab in one day, according to Dr. Khaled Al Jarallah, head of the COVID-19 supreme advisory committee at the Ministry of Health.
Al Jarallah shared on Twitter that the vaccination path is the way back to normalcy. https://twitter.com/kaljarallah/status/1389286925761224707
Restrictions lifted for vaccinated individuals
People rushed to vaccination centres as Kuwait decided to lift some restrictions on those who are vaccinated.
On Monday, Kuwait’s Cabinet of Ministers issued a decision saying that from May 22 all Kuwaitis, their first degree relatives and domestic workers are barred from travelling out of Kuwait unless they are vaccinated.
Those who are permitted to travel are the following: (i) those who have got both doses and two weeks have passed since the second dose; (ii) those who have got one dose and five weeks have passed; and (iii) those who have got the first dose then got COVID-19 can travel two weeks after testing positive.
As for the cinemas, Cincescape, the largest and oldest cinema company in Kuwait, announced it will be opening its doors on Eid Al Fitr, but only to those that are vaccinated.
Vaccine roll out
So far, Kuwait has been administering the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine. Between the two, Kuwait has so far administered more than one million doses, since it began its vaccination campaign back on December 24. Kuwait has currently 22 vaccination centres, 21 of which are health clinics around Kuwait that are designated for the Oxford vaccine. In addition, the Ministry of Health has mobile vaccination units used for those who are bedridden or are unable to travel to the vaccination centres.
To reduce the foot traffic at the Mishref Fairground as it is the only vaccination centre administering the Pfizer vaccine, Kuwait will be opening five new vaccination centres that will be fully equipped to administer the Pfizer vaccine.
After Ramadan, a drive-thru vaccination centre is scheduled to be open at the South Island of the Al Jaber Causeway bridge, to further speed up the vaccination process.
