The Egyptian Health and Population Ministry said on Wednesday that starting from August, 15 million doses of the Sinovac-VACSERA vaccine will be produced locally per month.
The ministry noted that it aims to manufacture 40 million doses of the vaccine by the end of this year.
It added that this achievement comes in light of the political leadership’s directives to secure Egypt’s needs for the COVID-19 vaccine.
The ministry said that 300,000 doses were produced out of a total of 2.25 million doses scheduled to be produced in the first phase.
Two production lines will begin operating – the first with a capacity of 300,000 per shift, and the second with a production capacity of three million doses annually.
The production capacity will rise successively to reach one billion doses annually. The ministry noted that Egypt qualifies the factory with experts from India and China, for the purpose of exporting to Africa and the region.
The ministry said that the Egyptian government signed an agreement with the Chinese company Sinovac to manufacture 40 million doses annually, and agreed to increase it within six months to 80 million doses.
The factory of VACSERA, in al-Agouza, was rehabilitated with a production capacity of 300,000 doses per shift, and an annual production capacity of 110 to 220 million doses.
It added that this came upon on President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s directives to possess national capacities in manufacturing vaccines. It noted that Egypt has received group of experts from the World Health Organization at VACSERA, and a positive report on the possibility of work was obtained.
