Dubai, May 18: The United Arab Emirates announced Tuesday that it will begin offering booster shots to those who received the Chinese state-backed Sinopharm vaccine six months after vaccination.

The brief statement comes after some in the UAE received a third shot amid concerns of a low antibody response from the vaccine. Last month, China's top disease control official, in a rare acknowledgement, said current vaccines offer low protection against the coronavirus. Chinese COVID-19 Vaccine Sinopharm Disapproved by Sri Lankan Medical Experts: Report.

China has distributed hundreds of millions of doses of domestically made vaccines abroad and is relying on them for its own mass immunisation campaign. The state-owned company has not reported detailed late-stage test results for scientists to independently analyse.

The World Health Organization recently gave the shot emergency approval, potentially paving the way for millions of the doses to reach needy countries through a U.N.-backed program rolling out coronavirus vaccines.

The UAE boasts it is among the world's fastest vaccination campaigns per capita. The country had heavily relied on the Sinopharm shot to vaccinate its vast foreign labor force.

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