VIDEO: Abu Dhabi opens facility for virus vaccine trial volunteers
- 02 Aug 2020
Gulf Today, Staff Reporter
The Department of Health Abu Dhabi in collaboration with G42 Healthcare and Abu Dhabi Health Services (SEHA) has announced the opening of a new purpose-built, walk-in registration, screening and testing facility at ADNEC for volunteers who want to participate in the world’s first clinical Phase III trial of an inactivated vaccine to combat COVID-19.
Those who want to volunteer can visit the facility directly without making an appointment.
ADNEC has the size and resources to process up to 1,000 volunteers a day, individuals who have already registered online but have not yet had a follow-up call can also benefit from the walk-in clinic if they wish to visit and receive on-site screening and the first vaccination three days after receiving a negative test for COVID-19. The facility will only be open to individuals who are resident in Abu Dhabi.
A highly experienced and qualified team of nurses, administrators, healthcare professionals and volunteers from SEHA are responsible at ADNEC for welcoming volunteers; managing the registration and screening process and administering the inactivated vaccine. The walk-in facility will be open daily from 8am to 8pm, including duration of Eid holidays except on Friday.
Since the programme commenced on 16th July, thousands of people from every Emirate have volunteered and registered to become part of the trials. The new facility will help to make it even simpler for volunteers in Abu Dhabi to register, be screened on site and then, if eligible, be invited to return in a few days to take the first shot of the vaccine.
Abu Dhabi-based G42 Healthcare is managing the clinical trial process under the supervision of the Department of Health Abu Dhabi and in coordination with Abu Dhabi Health Services (SEHA), whose specialized staff runs the on-site operations.
A feasibility evaluation for setting up similar sites in other part of the UAE to improve convenience for volunteers is currently being conducted.
For more information you can visit www.4humanity.ae
http://www.4humanity.ae> and stay up to date with announcements on social media by following @AShot4Humanity and #4humanity on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
The Phase III clinical trial for the inactivated vaccine follows the success of the Phase I and Phase II trials conducted by Sinopharm in China, which resulted in 100% of the volunteers generating antibodies after two doses in 28 days.
Phase III trials are open to healthy volunteers aged between 18 and 60 living in the UAE and will last between six to eight months, with the volunteers required to be available for follow ups during this time.
The UAE has realised a new achievement as part of its continuous efforts and preventive and precautionary measures it put in place to curb the spread of Covid-19 to ensure the safety of the community.
The new achievement comes after the successful practical use of police dogs all over the UAE airports as an additional defense line in detecting presumed Covid-19 cases. In this way, the UAE is considered the first country in the world to put this method into action which is still under study and training stage in other countries.
The UAE experiment and its protocols are unique in avoiding any direct contact between the dogs and the persons under examination according to the highest standards of health precautionary measures.
Practical application has been preceded by the necessary studies and meetings, in addition to brainstorming workshops and cooperation with a number of countries and experts. Discussions and theoretical studies went underway on using dogs in detecting Covid-19 cases given their strong sense of smell.
For this reason, they can be used in police patrols and securing malls, events, airports and other vital facilities.
The specialised teams from the national team are distributed at the country’s airports to supervise the actual application in monitoring and checking samples taken from those coming to the country from the armpit without direct contact with the dog , the trained dog in seconds can determine the possibility of that this person is infected or not.