Drug makers managed to bring to Egypt some medicine that helps treat coronavirus (COVID-19) patients, in order to be manufactured in the country, Health Minister Hala Zayed said on Monday, in a meeting with the prime minister.<\/p>\n
The meeting was attended by many officials, including the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research Khaled Abdel Ghaffar.<\/p>\n
This comes few weeks after Egypt\u2019s 23-year old drug manufacturer Eva Pharma announced starting producing antiviral Remdesivir as the first expected therapy for the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), Reuters reported.<\/p>\n
Producing the Ebola drug, Remdesivir, Eva Pharma becomes the first licensed manufacturer of this treatment in the African continent. The company said earlier in June it received a license from the US-based Gilead Sciences, which made Remdesivir, to start production and distribution to 127 countries.<\/p>\n
Eva Pharma will produce 500,000 doses of the drug per month to be sold locally, general manager Amgad Talaat said, adding that it will cost less than LE 2,000 ($124.07) each. The drug was sent to quarantine hospitals, Talaat added.<\/p>\n
During the Monday meeting, Prime Minister Mustafa MAdbouli urged officials to follow up on global attempts to develop a coronavirus vaccine and to coordinate to ensure an appropriate share of this vaccine for the northeastern African country, an official statement read.<\/p>\n
He noted that accelerating the development of drug industry in Egypt has become \u201curgent\u201d.<\/p>\n
Madbouli also affirmed the necessity to make sure all hospitals and pharmacies nationwide have the necessary drugs, adding that drug makers will be invited in a meeting to listen to their opinions, suggestions and complaints concerning drug industry in Egypt.<\/p>\n
The Egyptian Drug Authority earlier announced signing a deal with AstraZeneca to supply the country with the Oxford University’s vaccine for COVID-19 without disclosing the number of doses or the delivery date.<\/p>\n
Ahmed Salman, the only Egyptian researcher in the team working on the vaccine at Oxford University, said in a phone-in with TV anchor Amr Adib on June 13 that the vaccine is being experimented on a larger number of humans.<\/p>\n
Salman explained that the vaccine consists of a version of coronavirus that infects chimpanzees. The virus ability to reproduce is disabled before injected into humans so as the body becomes ready to destroy COVID-19 when infected.<\/p>\n
Egypt Today<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Drug makers managed to bring to Egypt some medicine that helps treat coronavirus (COVID-19) patients, in order to be manufactured in the country, Health Minister Hala Zayed said on Monday, in a meeting with the prime minister. The meeting was attended by many officials, including the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research Khaled Abdel […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40,"featured_media":190263,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7863],"tags":[63816,56107,2484,44483],"class_list":["post-190259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-english-section","tag-ahmed-salman","tag-covid-19","tag-egypt","tag-mustafa-madbouli"],"yoast_head":"\n