The second wave of Covid-19 has taken a toll on the country’s death rate due to its severity.
Over 200,000 people have now recovered from Covid-19 in Qatar, the Ministry of Public Health [MoPH] announced on Saturday.
During the last 24 hours, authorities recorded over 1,000 recoveries, bumping the total number of recovered cases to 200,467 in the country. Since the beginning of this year, Qatar has been grappling with a more severe second coronavirus wave.
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The total number is considered a huge milestone for Qatar, especially when considering the rise in cases from February until April of 2021.
The number of new daily new coronavirus cases has also significantly dropped during this month. On Saturday, the ministry reported 533 new cases, compared to 900+ cases reported daily in April. During the last week, the number of cases did not exceed 700.
Death-rate Concerns
However, despite maintaining one of the world’s lowest coronavirus mortality rate, the Gulf state has been recording more weekly deaths, with authorities attributing this to the spread of the UK and South African strains.
On Saturday, the ministry announced six new deaths, aged 47, 53, 53, 56, 57, and 76 years, three of whom had a history of chronic diseases.
Read also: Nearly 45% Qatar’s eligible population receive at least one Covid-19 dose
By December, health authorities had reported a total of 245 deaths since the start of the pandemic started. Less than five months later, 247 new death cases were recorded, bringing the total death toll to 502.
Vaccination Campaign
This comes as Qatar surpassed 30,000 daily vaccines for the first time last week. On Saturday, data from the Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) revealed 24,615 doses were administered amid an accelerating inoculation campaign.
So far, over 1,787,160 vaccines have been administered in the country with 50% of the eligible population expecting to receive at least one dose of the shot in the next few weeks.
This is in large part due to the fast and efficient vaccination campaign as well as the strict restrictions imposed by Qatar in early April.
Those who have received both doses of the vaccine are 61 times less likely to require hospitalisation if infected by the virus, and 91 times less likely to require intensive care.
There have been no Covid-19 related deaths among fully vaccinated people so far.
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