1 mln Hayat-Vax Covid-19 vaccine doses land in Vietnam

The batch belongs to a commercial contract for 30 million doses of the vaccine signed by Vietnamese pharmaceutical firm Vimedimex.

It also marks the first Hayat-Vax doses to reach Vietnam.

Vietnam's Health Ministry approved the vaccine, manufactured by China's Beijing Institute of Biological Products Co., Ltd and packaged by Gulf Pharmaceutical Industries in the UAE, for emergency use on Sept. 10.

Hayat-Vax is an inactivated vaccine, produced by growing the novel coronavirus in cell culture and then using chemicals to inactivate the virus.

The vaccine had been approved by UAE authorities in March, as it showed an efficacy of over 79 percent.

Vietnam has until now approved for emergency use eight different Covid-19 vaccines: British AstraZeneca, American Johnson & Johnson, Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech, Russian SputnikV, Chinese Sinopharm, Hayat-Vax from UAE, and Cuban Abdala.

The nation has received almost 60 million vaccine doses via the Covax facility, government aid and commercial contracts signed by local firms or the Health Ministry.

By Friday, 41 million doses had been administered, with almost nine million people getting two shots.