Egypt is to receive 1.9 million doses of AstraZenca vaccine soon, the health minister announced Tuesday .
This consignment part of a package of 40 million doses agreed upon with the global COVAX facility at the end of last year, Minister of Health Hala Zayed added.
To date, Egypt has received a total of 3.3 million of the British-Swedish AstraZeneca, of which 2.2 million doses come under the agreement with COVAX to secure doses for all countries.
Cairo also has been supplied with 3 million Chinese Sinopharm jabs over the past six months, along with 500,000 doses of the Sinovac vaccine, another Chinese-made vaccine.
The health minister’s remarks came after a meeting in Geneva with Aurélia Nguyen, managing director of COVAX.
Zayed said during the meeting that Egypt is prepared to cooperate with COVAX and vaccine manufacturers to produce doses by Egyptian firms to speed up worldwide supplies.
Egypt’s pharmaceutical firm VACSERA is currently manufacturing 2 million doses of Sinovac coronavirus vaccine as part of a wider deal with the Chinese company to produce 40 million doses by the end of this year.
The local production of the Sinovac vaccine, approved by the World Health Organisation (WHO) for emergency use on June 1 and by the Egyptian Drug Authority (EDA) in April, partly fulfills Egypt’s ambition to become a vaccine manufacturing hub for Africa after meeting domestic demand.
Egypt is also in talks for the local manufacture of the the British AstraZeneca vaccine, according to previous statements by Zayed.
Zayed is on a visit to the Swiss capital to discuss means of enhancing cooperation in health with various international organisations.
