United Arab Emirates approves Chinese Sinopharm vaccine

The Ministry of Health of the United Arab Emirates, through the state agency WAM, announced today that the third phase of the vaccine from the Chinese company Sinopharm has demonstrated 86% effectiveness and has been approved for use. The success rate would rise to 100% in the most severe cases, they add. 

More than 30,000 volunteers of more than 100 nationalities have participated in the trial, which has been carried out in Jordan, Egypt and Bahrain as well as in the United Arab Emirates. Despite the news, the lack of further data on the trial and any side effects on participants dampened optimism. 

The third phase began in July, although the vaccine was approved for use in certain risk groups in case of emergency as early as September. Doubts about the reliability of the data have been answered with a succinct "no safety problems were found".
 

The trials have been carried out in the United Arab Emirates by the Chinese National Biotechnology Group (CNBG) of Sinopharm, part of the 42 Group, an artificial intelligence company present in the UAE capital, and the Abu Dhabi Department of Health. And it would not be the only one, as it also plans to start trials with the Russian vaccine Sputnik V. A month ago, the emir of Dubai himself, Sheikh Mohammed ben Rached Al-Maktoum, announced last November that he had been inoculated with one of these experimental vaccines, without indicating what it would have been.

The United Arab Emirates has detected nearly 180,000 positive cases of coronavirus, of which at least 600 people are reported to have died, very similar to the figures found in neighbouring Qatar and Bahrain, and much higher, particularly the number of deaths in Saudi Arabia.