More countries are proceeding to authorize and use vaccines to prevent corona virus, while Chinese official media confirmed that the results of the effectiveness of a Chinese vaccine - which were received from China and the UAE - are valid data, despite their differences.

On Thursday, China agreed to launch the first domestic vaccine for the prevention of Covid-19 for public use, a vaccine produced by the China National Biotechnology Group of the state-backed company, Sinopharm.

The company that produced it had said that the vaccine showed an efficacy of 79.34%, based on an interim analysis of the late stages of clinical trials.

This percentage is lower than that announced by the UAE for the same vaccine on December 9, which reached 86%.

Yang Xiaoming, president of the producing company, said in statements to the local "Global Times" newspaper that countries' standards and procedures for diagnosing the disease differ, so the final results are different.

"Therefore, there were differences between the comprehensive data received from multiple countries and the protection percentage data that the UAE and Bahrain had previously evaluated," he added.

"But these two results are real and sound," he said, without providing further details about the data.

India allows the first vaccine

Meanwhile, India has agreed to use the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine to prevent the Corona virus, which paves the way for a massive vaccination campaign in the world's second most populous country.

Information Minister Prakash Javadekar told reporters on Saturday that the vaccine got the green light yesterday.

Corona tests in Ahmedabad (Reuters - Archive)

This is the first vaccine that the relevant authorities agree for emergency use in India, which has the second largest number of infections in the world after the United States, and the news comes on a day when the country is conducting exercises to simulate vaccination.

The minister said that at least 3 other vaccines are awaiting approval, namely, "Covaxin" produced by the Indian company "Bharat Biotech", and "Zycof-D" (Zycof-D) produced by the company "Zidos Cadila". Zydus Cadila from India, and the Russian "Sputnik-V" vaccine.

On the other hand, the health situation has deteriorated in some Arab countries, as there have been increases in infection cases in recent days.

Recommendation to close down in Lebanon

Health sector experts in Lebanon warned today, Saturday, that the country is heading to a "catastrophic" situation after the significant increase in the number of Covid-19 cases during the festive period, while hospitals are about to reach their maximum capacity.

Petra Khoury, the caretaker advisor for health affairs, said in a statement to Agence France-Presse that the National Committee to Combat Covid-19 met Saturday and issued a recommendation to the authorities to impose a new lockdown in the country for a period of at least 3 weeks.

In turn, the Lebanese Parliament's Public Health Committee urged the authorities to take the same measure.

Lebanon has witnessed several closures since February 2020, the last of which was last November, but the restrictions were eased after that, which led to a significant increase in the number of injuries during the holidays.

On the other hand, the UAE recorded 1963 new infections with the Coronavirus today, Saturday, to continue for the fourth consecutive day, recording records in infections since the outbreak of the pandemic.

The UAE had recorded 1,856 new cases on the first day of the new year and more than 1,700 on 30 and 31 December.