FG Approves New COVID-19 Vaccine

The Federal Government of Nigeria has approved the Sinopharm BBIBP-CorV COVID-19 vaccine in efforts to combat the third wave of the virus infections in the country.

This was disclosed on Tuesday, in Abuja by the Executive Director, NPHCDA, Dr. Faisal Shuaib, who declared the Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccine approved.

In his statement, Shuaib noted that the vaccine was developed by Sinopharm’s Beijing Institute of Biological Products “sometimes written as Beijing Bio-Institute of Biological Products,” which oftentimes gives the same vaccine two different acronyms (BBIBP and BIBP).

He said: “It completed phase 3 trials in Argentina, Bahrain, Egypt, Morocco, Pakistan, Peru and United Arab Emirate (UAE), with over 60,000 participants. BBIBP-CorV shares similar technology with CoronaVac and Covaxin, other inactivated virus vaccines for COVID-19.

“Its product name is SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine ‘Vero Cell’ not to be confused with the similar product name of CoronaVac.

“NAFDAC has approved Sinopharm vaccine, the approval was done three days ago; and yes, Sinopharm vaccine has also received WHO certification.

“So, it is a potential vaccine that we could use.

“There are so many vaccines out there, but one thing that we are very clear about is that we are not going to use all the available vaccines in Nigeria.

“At some point, we are going to draw a line in terms of the number of vaccines we would use, so that we can keep a close watch on the number of vaccines we are utilising in Nigeria,” he added.

Source: Politics Nigeria