Egypt Produces First COVID-19 Vaccine Batch Made in Egypt

Egypt’s Ministry of Health and Population stated on Monday 5 July that Egypt has produced the first local batch of the COVID-19 vaccine, in partnership with the Chinese firm Sinovac as a part of Egypt’s strategy to reach self-sufficiency while facing the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dr. Mostafa Madbouly, the Prime Minister, witnessed the production of the first million doses of Egyptian vaccine on Monday 5 July at the local headquarters of Vacsera company in Agouza.

“We were planning to have the production capacity ever since vaccines became available since we did not want to depend on the global market. Thankfully, we were able to achieve this with our Chinese partners,” stated Madbouly to Sky News Arabia.

Dr. Heba Waly, the CEO of Vacsera Company, added that there are plans to expand the branches of Vacsera to the 6th of October City to open new lines of production in the next three months.

The strategy the company is going for is to produce 80 million doses to vaccinate 40 million Egyptians by the end of 2021, with further plans to also export an estimated 400 million doses to Egypt’s neighboring countries.

Waly highlighted that the effectiveness of the Vascara-Sinovac vaccine is estimated to be 85 percent, Al-Masry Al Youm reported.

Waly also added on Egyptian television that this partnership project started in September 2020 and received the needed raw material in May 2021 after signing the contract with Sinovac.

According to the Ministry of Health and Population, the official cases on 6 July 2021 reached 175 cases, while the number of deaths linked to COVID-19 reached 20. This makes the total number of COVID-19 cases in Egypt have now reached 282,257 cases with a death toll of 16,842.

The World’s Health Organization (WHO) reported that from 3 January 2021 to 4 July 2021, the total number of administered vaccine doses is 4,442,102 doses.