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More immunity, little to no side effects: UAE's new Sinopharm Covid vaccine explained

Virus protein is the component of the new Sinopharm vaccine, says doctors

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By SM Ayaz Zakir

Published: Tue 28 Dec 2021, 5:20 PM

Last updated: Tue 28 Dec 2021, 6:00 PM

UAE healthcare practitioners and researchers believe that the Sinopharm CNBG's new recombinant protein vaccine gives more immunity and with little to no side effects.

The UAE's Ministry of Health and Prevention (MoHAP) has approved the emergency use of Sinopharm CNBG's new recombinant protein vaccine to be available to residents as a booster dose starting January 2022.

The ministry has said that the vaccine demonstrated an "improved immune capacity" against SARS-CoV-2 variants, with a high safety rate.

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Dr Pawan Kumar Srivastva, Consultant Internal Medicine, NMC Speciality Hospital, Al Nahda said, "The new Sinopharm vaccine contains only part of the virus rather than whole killed virus."

Dr Mohamed Aslam, Specialist Pulmonologist, International Modern Hospital says the new vaccine is more efficient and comes with many advantages. "The earlier Sinopharm vaccine was an inactivated one- where the component was whole dead virus. The new vaccine has only the protein as the component."

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Healthcare specialists believe that delivering the vaccine from production to the end-user is a big challenge as ensuring its safety and effectiveness is a complex task.

"The remarkable advantage of Sinopharm CNBG Covid-19 inactivated vaccine is the convenient transportation and storage. It just needs 2 to 8-degree celsius temperature environment with no special and harsh measures required to maintain its potency," said Dr Fiaz Ahamed, MD, Infection Control Department, Thumbay University Hospital

"These factors reduce the overall cost and meet the natural conditions of many countries, unlike the mRNA vaccine, which needs very stringent storage requirements to keep the vaccine effective and potent," added Dr Fiaz.

"The other west made vaccines like Pfizer- which is mRNA vaccine, require a very low temp with deep freezing of -70 for a long duration storage," said Dr Aslam.

"But the protein-based vaccination doesn't require extreme temperatures, which is cheaper and more effective,"

SARS-CoV-2 is a highly mutagenic virus that mutates like Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, and now Omicron. Medicos affirm that the Sinopharm CNBG Covid 19 vaccine has undergone many cross-neutralisation tests with newer strains of coronaviruses, considering different species from different countries. As per the data available, the Sinopharm Covid 19 vaccine offers broad-spectrum protection, and it possesses good cross neutralisation effect on strains of coronaviruses from different countries around the world.

"Since UAE is a country of many nationalities, the phase III trial for this new vaccine was conducted on nearly 50,000 volunteers from 125 countries. It has been observed that the seroconversion rate is up to 930 in generating neutralising antibodies, and there were no side effects recorded among any of the participants," said Dr Fiaz.

Doctors highlighted that such vaccines can be produced in huge quantities with more production facilities.

Hayat Biotech will produce and distribute the new vaccine, a joint venture between G42 and Sinopharm CNBG.

ayaz@khaleejtimes.com

SM Ayaz Zakir

Published: Tue 28 Dec 2021, 5:20 PM

Last updated: Tue 28 Dec 2021, 6:00 PM

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