31st December, 2020
China has approved for conditional use of its first coronavirus vaccine, developed by state-owned pharmaceutical company Sinopharm.
The approval was announced by the Joint Prevention and Control Mechanism of the State Council on Thursday.
This is coming a day after Sinopharm said its vaccine was found to be 79.3-per-cent effective in preliminary data from the final round of testing.
State-owned Sinopharm is among at least five Chinese companies that have been approved to carry out clinical trials for potential vaccines.
China has 15 coronavirus vaccines in clinical trials, including five that have entered phase 3 clinical trials, a State Council official said last week.
Wednesday’s announcement was the first time a Chinese company released late-stage trial efficacy data for a vaccine candidate.
Sinopharm’s vaccine efficacy rate is behind those reported by U.S. companies Pfizer, of 95 per cent, and Moderna, of 94 per cent.
China aims to vaccinate at least 50 million people before the start of the Lunar New Year holiday, in mid-February, in order to prevent the disease from spreading as hundreds of millions of people are expected to travel home for the holidays.