BEIJING (Reuters) – United Arab Emirates (UAE) has received a total of three million COVID-19 vaccine doses from China National Biotec Group (CNBG), the company said on Tuesday.
CNBG has moved into late-stage clinical trials two COVID-19 vaccine candidates respectively developed by its units in Beijing and Wuhan city. The Beijing unit’s shot obtained a green light last week for general public use in China.
CNBG is a subsidiary of state-backed China National Pharmaceutical Group (Sinopharm).
“According to preliminary feedback from UAE, emergency use shows that Sinopharm CNBG’s COVID-19 vaccine is safe in large-scale use and has significantly reduced the disease in vaccinated people,” CNBG said in an article published on Chinese social media WeChat, without specifying which candidate it referred to.
The firm didn’t break down the numbers of doses for each candidate in its supply to UAE. It’s not immediately clear how many of these doses were used in clinical trials and how many in real-life use.
Pakistan said last week it would purchase 1.2 million doses of the vaccine developed by CNBG’s Beijing unit.
(Reporting by Roxanne Liu and Ryan Woo. Editing by Mark Potter)
