Muscat – The Ministry of Health (MoH) on Wednesday announced that the booster dose of COVID-19 vaccine will be available free in several government and private health facilities across Muscat.

The private health facilities where the booster dose will be administered free of charge include Adlife Hospital in the wilayat of Amerat, Ihtimam Health Centre in Seeb Market, Bombay Diagnostic Centre in Ruwi and all branches of Badr al Samaa Group of Hospitals in Muscat.

Referring to the current infection rate, Dr Zakaria bin Yahya al Balushi, infectious diseases consultant at The Royal Hospital, said, “The affect of vaccinations in enhancing community immunity is clear to everyone. The third dose raises antibodies and immunity.”

He attributed the drop in daily case count to record levels and increase in the rate of community immunity to the ongoing vaccination campaign.

“We anticipate the people of Oman will have a normal Ramadan without closures and in a beautiful Ramadan atmosphere like 2019,” Dr Balushi said.

MoH urged all those who haven’t to take the third dose in order to ‘maintain stability of the epidemiological situation and enhance society’s immunity’.

MoH on Wednesday announced 180 new COVID-19 infections registered within the past 24 hours, taking the total cases in Oman to 387,009.