Egypt signs agreement with China to locally produce Sinovac vaccine

CAIRO – 21 April 2021: Egypt’s Holding Company for Biological Products and Vaccines (VACSERA) and Chinese biopharmaceutical company Sinovac signed two agreements on Wednesday to manufacture the Sinovav vaccine.

VACSERA will manufacture the final product using the ready-made product provided by Sinovac.

Egypt’s Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouli, Health Minister Hala Zayed and Chinese Ambassador to Egypt Liao Liqiang attended the signing ceremony.

The first agreement is related to the transfer of technology required to manufacture the vaccine doses, a Cabinet statement read. Under the agreement, Sinovac will grant VACSERA a limited license to use the manufacturing technology.

VACSERA will manufacture the vaccine inside the company’s production facilities.

The second agreement stipulates that Sinovac secures for Egypt all technical information related to the company’s vaccine and provides technical assistance.

Technical assistance will include examining VACSERA’s factories and testing the final product and means of manufacturing.

Egypt has started its vaccination campaign in January, starting with the medical teams at quarantine hospitals, for being on top of priority groups in terms of vaccination.

Egypt has received Sinopharm and AstraZeneca vaccine doses. As on 1 April, Egypt received a shipment comprising 854,000 AstraZeneca vaccine doses, upping total number of the received vaccine to around 1.5 million doses.

On Thursday, Egypt’s leading pharmaceutical company Minapharm said it would produce over 40 million doses of the Russian-made Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine per year, as per an agreement with the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF).

The agreement to produce the world’s first registered vaccine against the novel virus also includes Minapharm’s Berlin-based subsidiary ProBioGen AG.

Minapharm in a press release said the parties to the agreement plan to immediately start transferring technology required, expecting the rollout of the vaccine in the third quarter of 2021.

Minapharm says production of the 40 million annual doses will take place in its Cairo biotech facility for global distribution.

“Minapharm’s German subsidiary, ProBioGen AG, aims to undertake efforts for process optimization to further increase the production scale taking advantage of its expertise in viral vector technology and manufacturing process development for vaccines and gene therapy,” the press release read.

According to Minapharm, Sputnik V has been registered in 61 countries and proved 97.6% efficacy based on the analysis of data on the infection rate of coronavirus among those in Russia vaccinated with both components of the vaccine.