Mongolian nurses going home to home to offer booster doses to herders as part of their journeys along a bumpy track through a remote region of the Mongolian steppe.

The country of three million has taken some of the world’s toughest and most enduring measures against the coronavirus pandemic, shutting schools for much of the last two years and closing borders.

Its vaccination programme has seen huge take-up with more than 90 per cent of adults receiving two jabs. But the booster programme is seeing patchier success among nomadic communities thanks to both online misinformation and the sheer logistical challenge that comes with reaching remote communities in such a vast nation.

Mongolia is one of the most sparsely populated countries in the world and about one-third of the population are nomadic.

According to Mongolia’s health ministry there have been 687,391 Covid cases and over 2,000 deaths.

Cases have plummeted since vaccines were rolled out, and Ulaanbaatar is anxious progress is not lost through jab hesitancy. MongoSince September when daily cases peaked at more than 3,000, numbers have rolled down to an average of 200 daily cases, which he says is partly down to boosters.

Only around 45 percent of adults have had a booster vaccine. (France 24)