Egypt has completed pre-clinical trials for efficacy and safety of three locally-made COVID-19 vaccines and is waiting for medical authorities' approval to start clinical trials on human volunteers, Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research Khaled Abdel-Ghaffar said on TV on Tuesday. As of March 2020, the country has been working on three local vaccines; two of which via the National Research Center, which is part of the Higher Education and Scientific Research ministry, while the third vaccine via a coalition of scientists from the Higher education ministry, agricultural ministry, and the Armed forces, according to Abdel-Ghaffar. Minister Abdel-Ghaffar said the three vaccines are in the same stage currently as all pre-clinical trials on animals have been completed and many papers have been already published in scientific magazines. "The results are very promising," the minister pointed out. "We are awaiting the approval of the Egyptian Drug Authority to start the next step, which involves carrying out the three stages of the clinical trials on volunteers," he noted. The minister said that a request has already been submitted to the Egyptian Drug Authority (EDA) to assess the previous steps and allow the clinical trials after confirming the efficacy and safety of the vaccines on the volunteers. The EDA, the country's medicine regulatory body, has approved the emergency use of five vaccines: Sinopharm, AstraZeneca, Sinovac, CoronaVac and Covishield- AstraZeneca. Egypt has received millions of doses of Sinopharm, Sinovac, and AstraZeneca vaccines and started to locally manufacture the Sinovac vaccine as it targets becoming a hub for manufacturing coronavirus vaccines for African countries.
