Covid-19: 100,000 UAE-made Hayat-Vax vaccines arrive in Philippines

Dubai - The Philippine Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved the emergency use of the Hayat-Vax.

The Philippines has received 100,000 doses of the UAE-made Covid-19 vaccine ‘Hayat-Vax’. The life-saving vaccine donated by the UAE government arrived in Manila on Wednesday.

Hayat — which means ‘life’ in Arabic — is the first indigenous Covid-19 vaccine in the Gulf region to be manufactured by a joint venture between Abu Dhabi’s G42 and Sinopharm.

The Philippine Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved the emergency use of the Hayat-Vax, which is identical to the Sinopharm vaccine from China. The jab will be administered to people aged 18 and above, FDA chief Rolando Enrique Domingo said.

Wilben M. Mayor, assistant secretary and chief of staff of the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process, thanked the UAE government for the donation. “This will be very helpful…especially during this time of the pandemic and with the Delta variant that we have here in the Philippines,” Mayor said.

The Philippine News Agency (PNA) quoted Mayor as saying that the shipment would be a “huge” aid to the country’s vaccination programme amid a limited supply of jabs globally.

sahim@khaleejtimes.com