China to send Egypt batch of COVID-19 vaccines: report

CAIRO, Oct. 29 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Ambassador to Egypt Liao Liqiang said a batch of Chinese COVID-19 vaccines are expected to arrive in Egypt "very soon," Egypt's official MENA news agency has reported.

China-Egypt bilateral relations have reached a new level thanks to the close cooperation between the two countries in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, given the fact that the two countries have been supporting each other all along, Liao told an online news conference, according to the report on Wednesday.

Egypt is currently using China's Sinopharm and Sinovac COVID-19 vaccines in its vaccination campaign nationwide.

Egypt's state-owned vaccine maker VACSERA and Chinese biopharmaceutical company Sinovac signed an agreement in April to jointly manufacture the Sinovac vaccines in VACSERA's factory in the North African country.

The country has so far managed to vaccinate about 24 million people against COVID-19, with plans to vaccinate 40 million people out of its around 100-million population by the end of 2021, according to Egyptian officials.