China picks UAE for Sinopharm vaccine’s Middle East production hub
- Gulf Pharmaceutical Industries PSC said on Sunday it signed a contract to start manufacturing the vaccine from April
- The deal deepens Beijing’s influence in the Gulf, long a bastion of US power
The agreement with Abu Dhabi’s G42 Medications Trading did not include details on how many doses will be manufactured. G42, which describes itself as an artificial intelligence and cloud computing firm, had helped roll out trials of the Sinopharm vaccine in the country.
“It is a really clear signal that the UAE is China’s most trusted partner in the Middle East and it creates linkages with other countries in the region” said Jonathan Fulton, assistant professor at Abu Dhabi’s Zayed University and a specialist in China-Gulf relations.
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Fulton described the Iran deal as aspirational. “The UAE relationship is not aspirational, they are deep into the implementation of it,” he said. “This shows the depth and the breadth of the involvement.”
The Sinopharm vaccine can be transported and stored at normal refrigerated temperatures, making it a candidate for the developing world. The company’s annual production capacity for Covid-19 vaccines is set to reach 3 billion doses, its chairman Yu Qingming said this month, without giving a time frame.
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In November, Abu Dhabi launched the Hope Consortium, a logistics grouping with the capacity to distribute more than 6 billion vaccine doses. The consortium includes the emirate’s Department of Health, Etihad Cargo, Abu Dhabi Ports Group, Rafed and SkyCell.
In neighbouring Dubai, companies including Emirates airline, ports operator DP World and Dubai Airports have also formed an alliance to move 2 billion doses of vaccines around the world this year, focusing on emerging markets.