GENEVA, May 7 -
The World HealthOrganization approved a
COVID-19 vaccine from China’s state-owned drugmaker
Sinopharm for emergency use on Friday, a boost to
Beijing’s push for a big role
in inoculating the world.
اضافة اعلان
The vaccine, one of two main Chinese
coronavirus vaccines that collectively have already been given to hundreds of
millions of people in China and elsewhere, is the first developed by a
non-Western country to win WHO backing. It is also the first time the WHO has
given emergency use approval to a Chinese vaccine for any infectious disease.
A WHO emergency listing is a signal to
national regulators that a product is safe and effective. It also allows it to
be included in COVAX, a global programme to provide vaccines mainly for poor
countries, which has hit supply problems.
“This expands the list of COVID-19
vaccines that COVAX can buy, and gives countries confidence to expedite their
own regulatory approval, and to import and administer a vaccine,” WHO
Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a briefing.
The WHO had already given emergency
approval to COVID-19 vaccines developed by Pfizer-BioNTech, AstraZeneca,
Johnson & Johnson and, last week, Moderna.
The decision to approve Sinopharm’s
vaccine was taken by WHO’s technical advisory group, which began meeting on
April 26 to review the latest clinical data as well as Sinopharm’s
manufacturing practices.
A separate group of WHO experts, the
Strategic Advisory Group of Experts (SAGE), voiced concern this week over data
provided by Sinopharm on the risk of serious side-effects in some patients, but
was confident in the vaccine’s ability to prevent disease, according to a
document reviewed by Reuters.
Tedros said that, following the
approval, SAGE had recommended that adults over 18 receive two doses of the
Sinopharm vaccine.
SAGE found an efficacy of 78.1 percent
after two doses in multi-country Phase III clinical trials, according to the
document. The vaccine’s developer, Beijing Biological Products Institute, a
unit of Sinopharm subsidiary China National Biotec Group, had announced an
efficacy of 79.34 percent.
The WHO has said it could reach a
decision on China’s other main COVID-19 vaccine, made by Sinovac Biotech, as
soon as next week. The technical experts reviewed it on Wednesday.
China has deployed around 65 million
doses of the Sinopharm vaccine and more than 200 million doses of the Sinovac
shot. Both have been exported to many countries, particularly in Latin America,
Asia and Africa, many of which have had difficulty securing supplies of vaccines
developed in the West. (Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Peter Graff
and Kevin Liffey)
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