Ministry hits back at vaccine death rumors in Saudi Arabia

JEDDAH: The Ministry of Health has said that rumors about deaths caused one year after taking the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccine are false, stressing that those who have taken their jabs are in good health.

It added that the safety of vaccines is “scientifically proven,” and their effectiveness on individuals and society will be “one of the most important weapons in the face of the pandemic.”
The ministry continues to call on the public to get information from official sources and to not follow rumors. Dr. Muhammad Al-Abd Al-Aly, assistant minister of health and ministry’s spokesperson, stressed that Saudi nationals and expatriates had high levels of awareness of the virus, demonstrated by adherence to precautionary measures. He said that there is an increasing demand for vaccinations. The ministry also announced that those who received the COVID-19 vaccine outside the Kingdom can now register their information in Saudi systems, including the Tawakkalna app.
“You can register the doses of the COVID-19 vaccine that were obtained from outside the Kingdom in the systems of the Ministry of Health, which will be reflected in the Tawakkalna app, via the link https://eservices.moh.gov.sa/CoronaVaccineRegistration/,” the ministry said on Twitter.
It said that to ease the uploading process, applicants should ensure the accuracy of the information entered and have a national or resident identity.
It said that the entered documents must be a PDF file with a size not exceeding 1MB.

The applicant must also ensure that the vaccine certificate includes the following requirements: Personal data is clarified in the certificate, the certificate must be in either Arabic, English, French, or translated into Arabic, and the certificate must contain the name and date of the vaccine and its batch number.
The application will require a copy of the applicant’s passport and vaccination certificate.
The ministry also noted that a new application cannot be uploaded while another is pending, adding that an application may take up to five working days to process.
The approved vaccines in the Kingdom are Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, Oxford-AstraZeneca, and Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen.
Those who do not have a national identity or an Iqama (residency permit) and wish to visit the Kingdom can register their vaccination status electronically via the following link: https://muqeem.sa/#/vaccine-registration/home.
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia on Monday reported 15 more COVID-19-related deaths, taking the overall toll to 7,471.
There were 1,161 new cases reported, meaning that 458,707 people in the country had now contracted the disease. A total of 9,376 cases remained active, of which 1,579 patients were in critical condition.
In addition, the ministry said 1,216 patients had recovered from the disease, increasing the total number of recoveries in the Kingdom to 441,860.

Testing hubs and treatment centers set up throughout the country have dealt with hundreds of thousands of people since the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak. Meanwhile, 15,028,653 people in the country had to date received a jab against COVID-19.