Over 2 million COVID-19 vaccine doses administered in Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia’s Health Ministry said that more than 2 million COVID-19 vaccine doses had been administered across 500 sites to date.

Ministry spokesman Dr. Mohammed Al-Abd Al-Aly said that the decision to withdraw the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine by a number of European countries was done temporarily to ensure its safety, adding that this was a “temporary and precautionary measure” commonly done with vaccines to ensure their safety.

“We assure you that some of these countries have returned to using it after it was proven safe,” he tweeted. “We confirm that the vaccines in the Kingdom are safe and effective.”

The ministry announced 351 new infections on Saturday, raising the total number of confirmed cases to 382,059.

Of the new cases, 175 were in Riyadh, 74 were in the Eastern Province and 42 were in Makkah. The Northern Borders and Jazan regions reported three cases each, while Najran had two cases and Baha reported only one new case.

The total number of recoveries in the Kingdom increased to 372,456 after 239 more patients recovered from the virus. The country’s recovery rate is 97.48 percent. There were seven new COVID-19 deaths reported on Saturday, raising the death toll to 6,563, the Saudi Press Agency reported.

There are currently 3,040 active cases, with 553 of these in critical condition.

There have been 14.2 million PCR tests in Saudi Arabia, with 44,953 carried out in the past 24 hours.