The ruler of Dubai has received a Covid-19 vaccine made by Chinese pharmaceutical company Sinopharm. It’s now in the third and final stage of clinical trials and has not yet been approved for widespread use.
UAE Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al-Maktoum took to Twitter on Tuesday morning to announce that he had been vaccinated against Covid-19. The vaccine in question is made by China’s national pharmaceutical group Sinopharm, and is yet to be approved for nationwide use.
Sheikh Mohammed, who is also the vice president of the UAE and the ruler of Dubai, shared a photo of himself being vaccinated and praised the healthcare professionals “working relentlessly” to make the vaccine widely available.
The ruler is the latest and highest-ranking Emirati official to receive the vaccine.
Earlier in October, UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan and UAE minister for cabinet affairs Mohammed Abdullah al-Gergawi also received the Chinese vaccine.
The trial vaccine was granted emergency approval in mid-September for use on frontline healthcare workers in the UAE. “The vaccine will be available to our first line of defense heroes who are at the highest risk of contracting the virus,” the National Emergency Crisis and Disaster Management Authority tweeted.
On October 20, Tian Baoguo, a senior official at China’s Ministry of Science and Technology, told gathered media that the Sinopharm vaccine had been given to 60,000 people as part of a trial and “initial results show that they are safe,” with no serious side effects reported.
The world’s first Covid-19 vaccine, named Sputnik V, was developed in Moscow by the Gamaleya Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology. The vaccine entered circulation in Russia in September.
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