The Director General of the Jordan Food and Drug Administration (JFDA), Nizar Muhaidat, announced Saturday that the JFDA has authorized the emergency use of the Sinopharm vaccine against COVID-19.

This will be the second vaccine approved for use in Jordan following the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. 

Additionally, the Head of the Coronavirus Portfolio at the Ministry of Health, Wael Al-Hayajneh confirmed to Roya that doses of the Sinopharm vaccine are set to arrive in the Kingdom Saturday night from China.

He pointed out the possibility of obtaining additional vaccines as necessary.

The Sinopharm vaccine is an inactivated, two-dose vaccine from the Beijing Institute of Biological Products, a subsidiary of the state-owned conglomerate Sinopharm. The company announced Dec. 30 that preliminary data from last-stage trials had shown it to be 79.3 percent effective, lower than that of Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna.

However, the UAE, a vaccine partner, approved Sinopharm earlier this month and said the vaccine was 86 percent effective, according to interim results of its phase three trial.

In July, the UAE started phase III of the vaccine’s clinical trials. The vaccine was given emergency use authorization by the UAE’s Ministry of Health and Prevention in September to administer to healthcare workers on the frontline of the virus.

An interim analysis of the clinical trials published by the ministry stated that the vaccine has a “99 percent seroconversion rate of neutralizing antibodies and 100 percent effectiveness in preventing moderate and severe cases of the disease," according to Arab News.

The analysis showed no life-threatening safety concerns, but the UAE is conducting studies of post-authorization efficacy to ensure further safety of the vaccine.

The trials included 31,000 participants from 125 different nationalities and took place in several different countries, including Jordan.