The UAE's National Emergency, Crisis and Disaster Management Authority (NCEMA) has reported that China’s Sinopharm vaccine shows 100% efficacy against moderate and severe cases of Covid-19. NCEMA tweeted that the vaccine has achieved efficacy of 86%.

This came after the Phase III clinical trials of both China’s Sinopharm and Russia's Sputnik V vaccine. The announcement was made at Covid-19 briefing held by the UAE Government on Tuesday.

The NCEMA added that UAE’s ‘Hope Consortium’ which was launched in November is aimed to facilitate distribution of 6 billion doses of Covid-19 vaccines around the world, and aims to raise this capacity to 18 billion by 2021 end.

Dubai has laid out plans to inoculate 70% of its population with the Pfizer and BioNTech’s Covid-19 vaccine by the end of 2021. This vaccination campaign is free of charge for citizens and residents, as relayed by a health official on Tuesday.

The escalation of the vaccination drive follows UAE detecting a “limited number” of cases of the new coronavirus variant, a top official has said. The affected individuals of the new strain had come from abroad.