More than 97% of Qatar Airways' Employees were Vaccinated: CEO Al Baker

Qatar Airways

More than 97 percent of Qatar Airways employees have been vaccinated as part of the airline's efforts to protect its employees and passengers from the Covid-19 epidemic, according to Qatar Airways CEO Akbar Al Baker.

“At QR, we are more than 97 percent vaccinated,” Akbar Al Baker remarked in an exclusive interview with Martin Moodie of The Moodie Davitt Report. Our entire crew has been inoculated onboard the flights. The group's whole workforce has been inoculated.

And we're now vaccinating contractors at the airport and throughout the country — more than 70% of people have already received their second shot or are waiting for it. In fact, we received another half-million Moderna injections this morning.” 

“As you can see, we have the lowest infection rate of any country our size, the lowest number of patients in ICUs, and one of the lowest death rates in the world today.”

Qatar has also invested in a 15-minute PCR, according to him. Qatar has placed an order for 1.5 million fast PCR tests with a 15-minute turnaround time. “In a typical clinic, that would take four or five hours,” he remarked.

“During this time, we took a lot of chances. It was a brand-new pandemic. The virus had just been discovered. Nobody knew what this virus's genomic properties were. However, we put ourselves in harm's way solely to serve our passengers.

We were also an airline that issued refunds to everybody who inquired within a short period of time... we gave $1.9 billion in reimbursements over a 90-day period.”

Gaining confidence

He also said that vaccination is the only way this industry can gain confidence and move forward.

“Keep in mind that when people are vaccinated, they have the confidence. You see what is unique about this pandemic, this virus, is that it can end up with you in the ICU. With vaccination… there is a very, very small percentage that will end up in an ICU. And even if they’re in ICU, they’re not on a ventilator.”

The passenger figures at Hamad International Airport in April and May were twice that of Heathrow and much above Hong Kong airport. “You know, Hong Kong is at the doorstep of China, the world’s largest aviation market after the US. And, we are double the traffic from Heathrow and have maybe 50 times more traffic than Hong Kong,” Al Baker said.