The new plant, a joint venture with Sinopharm, to be launched later this year will have a production capacity of 200 million doses per year.
A new factory in Abu Dhabi will begin manufacturing Sinopharm’s COVID-19 vaccine later this year.
Production will be carried out in a joint venture between the Chinese pharmaceutical giant and Abu Dhabi-based technology company Group 42 (G42).
The company is an expansion of Chinese diplomacy in the Gulf region and is helping the UAE diversify its economy away from hydrocarbon production.
The new plant, which is under construction in Abu Dhabi’s Khalifa Industrial Zone (KIZAD), will have a production capacity of 200 million doses per year with three filling lines and five automated packaging lines, announced on Monday. a press release from the joint venture. .
The vaccine will be called Hayat-Vax when made in the UAE, but it is the same inactivated vaccine from the Beijing Biologics Institute (BiBP), a unit of Sinopharm’s Chinese National Biotec Group (CNBG). , which the UAE approved for general use in December.
“Hayat-Vax is the first COVID-19 vaccine to be produced in the Arab world,” the statement said.
As the new plant expands, interim production of the vaccine has already started in the emirate of Ras al-Khaimah by Gulf Pharmaceutical Industries PSC (Julphar).
This provisional production line has an initial capacity of two million doses per month and no details have been given on the duration of production.
Julphar’s share price jumped 14.4% to 1.4 dirhams ($ 0.3812), its biggest one-day gain since June.
The United Arab Emirates, through the G42, hosted phase three clinical trials of the Sinopharm vaccine starting in July, which then spread to other countries in the region, including Bahrain.
The UAE approved the vaccine for frontline workers in September before making it available to the general public in December.
The UAE said its trials showed the vaccine to be 86% effective, while Sinopharm reported 79.34% effectiveness based on interim results.
Some people in the UAE failed to develop enough antibodies after a second dose of the Sinopharm vaccine and were given a third dose, the UAE Department of Health said this month. He said the number was “minimal” compared to the number of vaccines given.