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Jordan said on Saturday that it approved China’s Sinopharm coronavirus vaccine for emergency use, having previously given the green light to the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.
“The emergency use of the … Sinopharm vaccine against the novel coronavirus has been authorized,” the head of Jordan’s Food and Drug Administration, Nizar Mheidat, told state television.
“It is the second vaccine available for use in Jordan after the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine,” which Jordan approved in December, Al-Mamlaka told television.
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Sinopharm of China says its vaccine has a 79 percent efficacy rate.
Health Minister Nazir Obeidat said late last month that the kingdom had ordered one million doses of the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine.
He also said that Jordan hoped to access 650,000 doses of the AstraZeneca / Oxford vaccine through the global Covax program, and that the country had an agreement with the US group Johnson & Johnson.
The start date for Jordan’s vaccination campaign, which will initially target 20-25 percent of its 11 million people, has yet to be announced.
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Health authorities expect the doses of the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine to arrive in the country in late January or early February.
Health centers across the country will participate in the deployment.
The Health Minister said in November that the vaccines would be distributed free of charge to Jordanian and foreign residents.
The Hashemite kingdom has officially recorded more than 305,000 new coronavirus cases and nearly 4,000 deaths.
