Egyptian drugmaker Eva Pharma will start manufacturing a local Covid-19 vaccine using “100 per cent Egyptian technology” as soon as this year, chief executive Riad Armanious told The National.
“We’re doing extensive testing and extensive work to develop a vaccine from scratch that is our own,” Mr Armanious said.
Last month, Egyptian Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly approved the signing of a partnership deal between the higher education and scientific research ministry, the agriculture ministry and Eva Pharma to produce a coronavirus vaccine, but additional details were not disclosed.
Eva Pharma CEO
The vaccine production facility at Eva Pharma’s factory in the 6th of October City on the outskirts of Cairo has been under construction since February.
“By the end-of-year we should have human vaccine production in the facility from scratch and we should have first production fully made by June 2022,” Mr Armanious said.
The company has produced vaccinations in collaboration before, but only for veterinary use.
“Until today, no human vaccine has been made in this country,” Mr Armanious said.
It was previously reported that Eva Pharma, Egypt’s second oldest pharmaceutical company, would be producing China’s Sinovac vaccine. But Mr Armanious said this was incorrect.
The race to increase a Covid-19 vaccine supply through local production has become critical in the country of 100 million, where only 3.3 per cent of the population has been given one dose and 0.7 per cent is fully vaccinated.
Egypt has now disclosed a total of 277,797 Covid-19 cases and 15,898 deaths, although actual numbers are likely far higher due the exclusion of private lab results and limited testing.
State-owned vaccine maker Vacsera signed an agreement with Sinovac in April to produce 40 million doses locally by the end of the year.
The first batch of 2 million doses is due to be ready by the end of this month.
A second Vacsera facility in the 6th of October City is being built at a cost of over $22 million.
The vaccine production complex will be the largest in the Middle East and Africa, with a capacity to manufacture 3 million doses daily, Egypt’s health ministry said, following an inspection from Health Minister Hala Zayed on Sunday.
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The roll-out is expected in the third quarter of this year, according to the deal signed in April.
Egypt has so far received 3.3 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, mainly through the Covax initiative that aims to ensure equitable vaccine distribution.
It has also received 3 million Chinese Sinopharm doses and 500,000 Sinovac doses.
Mr Armanious said Eva Pharma is addressing the vaccine supply shortfall and long-term needs of inoculating the Egyptian population against Covid-19.
“We weren’t prepared for this inevitable circumstance. We are still not doing enough to prepare for this scenario repeating itself,” he said.
“If you need to vaccinate everybody every year, let alone every six months, then only the rich countries will be able to vaccinate enough people.”
Eva Pharma, established in 1997, has its roots in a family-owned business dating back to 1917, when the original Dr Riad Armanious laid the foundations of the Armanious Group.
Today, Eva Pharma has three factories in Cairo, producing more than 240 medicines.
In June last year, it received a license from Gilead Sciences to make Remdesivir, used in the treatment of moderate to severe Covid-19 cases, and distribute it in 127 countries.
While local production of existing vaccines involves receiving the raw materials and completing the formulation and filling, creating a new vaccine takes more research, testing and time, he explained.
“The more difficult part is to produce the actual protein that then gets purified, formulated and filled.”
Once completed, the mega production facility will have the capacity to produce tens of millions of doses per month.
“We need to have extra capacity for what we don’t know and we need to have extra capacity already for Covid-19,” Mr Armanious said.
