Egypt launches inoculation drive against COVID-19 with frontline healthcare workers

On Sunday, January 24, Egypt launched a vaccination campaign against the novel coronavirus. The first shots of the Chinese state-owned pharmaceutical giant Sinopharm’s vaccine were given to healthcare workers in the Suez Canal city of Ismailia. Next, the authorities have planned to vaccinate elders and people who suffer from chronic diseases.

During a televised news conference, Health Minister Hala Zayed said that they would prioritize vaccinating healthcare workers in 40 hospitals which have been designated to treat COVID-19 patients. She also said that people would receive two doses of the vaccine over a course of 21 days. She added that the vaccine is 86 per cent effective. As per a tally by the John Hopkins University, Egypt has a total of 161,143 cases with 8,902 fatalities. 

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All that you need to know about the vaccine

During late December, Chinese regulators approved the first homegrown COVID-19 vaccine developed by Sinopharm, a state-controlled company. The approval came a day after Sinopharm said that its COVID-19 vaccine is 79.34 per cent effective and cited interim analysis of Phase 3 clinical trials. The Chinese drugmaker also said that the company has filed an application with the regulators to allow the vaccine for a broad roll-out which has now been granted conditional approval by the government. 

China’s Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccine is comparatively less effective than the ones developed by Pfizer-AstraZeneca and Moderna that have shown an efficacy rate of nearly 95 per cent. Meanwhile, Russia has also said that its Sputnik V is 91 per cent efficient against the highly-infectious disease. During the same period, British-Swedish pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca claimed that its vaccine candidate was effective against the new variant of coronavirus, which was recently discovered in the UK and other European nations. Speaking to Sunday Times, the company CEO Pascal Soriot also asserted that researchers have found out the “winning formula” making the jab as effective as rival candidates. The remarks came when British health officials were eyeing approval of the COVID-19 vaccine developed by AstraZeneca along with the University of Oxford.

Read: Global Coronavirus Infections Close To Grim 100 Million Mark

Partial results suggest that AstraZeneca shot is about 70 per cent effective in preventing coronavirus as compared to 95 per cent efficacy as reported by Pfizer-BioNTech. The UK, which approved the Pfizer-BioNTech candidate on December 2 has already inoculated a considerable amount of its population. The AstraZeneca-Oxford COVID-19 vaccine candidate is based on a modified version of adenovirus, a common cold virus. The vector stripped of its disease-causing genes and modified to carry genetic instructions for making the coronavirus spike protein. This prompts the cells to cause an immune response which eventually protects against the SARS-CoV-2.

Read: Immune System Of Recovered COVID-19 Patients May Evolve To Fight Coronavirus Variants: Study

Also Read: COVID-19 Triggers Antibodies From Previous Coronavirus Infections, Says Study

(Image Credits: AP)