Qatar to provide coronavirus vaccines for Afghan evacuees
COVID-19 tests and vaccines will be administered to Afghan evacuees who don't immediately depart for other flights, the Qatari Foreign Ministry has said.
Qatar will provide coronavirus vaccines to Afghan evacuees staying in temporary housing, the Foreign Ministry said Thursday, as the window closes on the US-led evacuation effort from the Taliban-run country.
The Gulf state has so far facilitated the evacuation of more than 40,000 people from Kabul, the Foreign Ministry said Thursday. Qatar is currently hosting “a large number of evacuees, most of them students, families and journalists,” the ministry said, adding that evacuation efforts will continue “in the coming days.”
Since the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, the United States has been using Al Udeid Air Base as a transit hub for military evacuation flights. Southwest of Doha, Al Udeid is the largest US military base in the region.
Qatar said Thursday it will provide evacuees who do not immediately depart the country with a PCR test or a COVID-19 vaccine on request. Doha News reports that more than 500 Afghans have been moved to temporary housing at a compound in Qatar that has a health center on site.
