Jordan: Chinese Sinopharm Covid-19 Vaccine Approved For Use

Jordan has approved the emergency use of the Covid-19 vaccine manufactured by the Chinese pharmaceutical company Sinopharm.

“Emergency use of the Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccine has been approved. This is the second approved vaccine in Jordan after the Pfizer vaccine,” Nizar Mhaidat, head of Jordan’s Food and Drug Authority, told state television on Sunday. ‘

Sinopharm says its vaccine is 79% effective in protecting against COVID-19. Jordanian Health Minister Nazir Obeidat said last month that Jordan had approved the import of 1 million doses of the Pfizer and BioNT vaccine.

He said that Jordan is expected to receive six and a half million doses of the vaccine manufactured by the British company AstraZeneca / Oxford under the global ‘Kovex program’. In this regard, Jordan has reached an agreement with the US group Johnson & Johnson. Under this program, the poor countries of the world will be provided free or cheap vaccine of Covid-19 vaccine.

The Jordanian government has not yet announced a date for the launch of the vaccination campaign. It says that initially 20 to 25 per cent of the country’s population will be vaccinated. It should be noted that the total population of Jordan is 11 million. It has a population of one lakh.

Jordanian health officials say the first batch of Pfizer and BioNtech vaccines will arrive by the end of January or early February, and all medical centres in the country will provide free vaccines to Jordanian citizens and residents.

So far, 305,000 cases of the coronavirus have been officially registered in Jordan. About 4,000 of these patients have died.