UAE to manufacture Chinese COVID vaccine in Abu Dhabi

A new factory in the UAE’s capital city will start manufacturing Sinopharm’s COVID-19 vaccine later this year. The Middle Eastern country hosted phase-three clinical trials of the Sinopharm vaccine from July.

The new plant is being built in the Khalifa Industrial Zone of Abu Dhabi (KIZAD), it will become a joint venture with the Chinese firm Sinopharm. The local plant to be launched later this year to produce 200 million doses of COVID-19 jab annually.

The UAE vaccine will be called Hayat-Vax when manufactured in the UAE but is the same inactivated vaccine from the Beijing Institute of Biological Product (BiBP), the statement said. In other words, Hayat-Vax is the first COVID-19 drug to be produced in the Arab world.

The UAE approved the vaccine for front-line workers in September before making it available to the general public in December, according to Al Jazeera.