Coronavirus: Meet the first Saudi Arabian citizen to receive COVID-19 vaccine

Saudi Arabian citizen Emad al-Daihan became the first citizen from Saudi Arabia on Thursday to receive the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 coronavirus vaccine (Tozinameran) in the capital Riyadh.

Speaking to Al Arabiya, al-Daihan said the process to register, schedule an appointment and receive the vaccine was smooth from the moment he entered his details on the Kingdom’s Sehaty app.

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“First, I registered through the Sehaty app for myself, my children and my wife. About three days later, I was contacted, and an appointment was set for yesterday at ten in the morning. I gave them some data about my health information. Then I went to the site that is the Exhibition Center and went there and was surprised by the preparations done by the Ministry of Health, which readied about 550 rooms for the vaccination campaign,” al-Daihan told Al Arabiya.

A Saudi man gets a dose of a coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccine, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia December 17, 2020. (Reuters)

Asked whether it was painful to receive the vaccine, al-Daihan said it felt like a normal vaccination experience, liking it to getting the flu shot.

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“On the contrary, it was a normal experience for me just like getting the influenza vaccination. There definitively weren’t any complications or any side effects from this aspect,” he said.

Since Thursday, Saudi Arabia has seen more than 300,000 people register on the Sehaty app to apply and schedule an appointment to receive the coronavirus vaccination.

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