Egypt's Ministry of Health and Population has revealed that the Egyptian Holding Company for Biological Products and Vaccines (VACSERA) has received 1,400 litres of the raw Sinovac vaccine, to manufacture 2.25 million doses. The ministry has cooperated with Chinese company, Sinovac, to start producing the vaccine against the novel coronavirus (COVID-19). This comes on the back of the Egyptian political leadership's directives to provide the vaccine locally following its domestic production in VACSERA factories. The Ministry of Health and Population said that the manufacture of 300,000 doses has been completed so far, and will be provided at vaccination centres soon so that the Egyptians will have a variety of effective vaccines. Sources told local media outlets that two production lines will be operated, the first in the Dokki area of Cairo, and the second in the Sixth of October. These will set out to manufacture 40 million doses of the Sinovac-VACSERA vaccine, which has an efficacy rate of over 80%. The ministry confirmed that the VACSERA's vaccine production factory in the 6th of October is equipped with eight central laboratories. These include the latest devices for measuring the quality of COVID-19 vaccines, and performing several basic tasks. The most important of these is the measuring of the stability of the final product under different conditions of pressure and temperature, in addition to tests and the safety of the final product. It added that the equipment used at the VACSERA factory is worth about $17m, with $80m spent on the factory's construction. The intention is to make the company in the 6th of October City the largest complex for the production of vaccines in the Middle East and Africa (MEA) region. It will also contribute to raising the production capacity of COVID-19 vaccines in cooperation with various production companies. The sources indicated that the factory dedicated to the production of COVID-19 vaccines includes a central refrigerator complex that can store 150 million doses. Its production capacity is set to reach 3 million doses of vaccines per day, equivalent to six times the production capacity of the company's factory in Agouza. They added that the VACSERA factory has received sufficient raw materials to manufacture about 5 million doses of the Chinese Sinovac vaccine against the coronavirus.
