Health

China’s Sinopharm says its vaccine is over 79% effective against Covid-19

Shanghai, China, Dec 30 (efe-epa).- A vaccine developed by China’s state-run Sinopharm is 79.34 percent effective in protection against the Covid-19, the company said on Wednesday, seeking approval from the government for its general public use in the country.

The vaccine, developed by a unit of the China National Biotec Group (CNBG), an affiliate of Sinopharm, is among several Chinese immunizing agents that have concluded Phase 3 trials.

“After a two-dose inoculation procedure, the vaccine receivers produced high-tier antibodies, and the seroconversion rate of neutralizing antibodies reached 99.52 percent,” state-run Xinhua news agency said, citing a statement from the developer.

The company has filed an application with the National Medical Products Administration for conditional market approval, the statement said.

However, the company did not mention any possible side effects.

The Chinese health authorities have earlier maintained that there were no serious adverse effects during the trials of different vaccines developed in the country.

Sinopharm is officially the first to announce the effectiveness of its vaccine based on an interim analysis of Phase 3 clinical trials in China, even as the United Arab Emirates (UAE), one of the countries that participated in the tests, had earlier indicated that efficacy of 86 percent.

The UAE was the first country to approve a Chinese vaccine. China has not yet officially authorized the marketing of any of the serums developed in the country. The state media had claimed that the authorities would do that before 2020 end.

The statement affirmed that the seroconversion rate of neutralizing antibodies is 99.5 percent, which is in line with tests carried out in the UAE.

The interim analysis of the trials corroborates with the World Health Organization (WHO), according to the CNBG’s Beijing Institute of Biological Products.

CNBG is developing another vaccine that is in the last of the stage trials. The two vaccines have already won approval from the government for emergency use in China.

The two serums and others developed by Chinese firms have been used since July in exceptional cases for health workers, employees of covid prevention programs, port workers, and carriers.

People moving to countries where the risk of contagion is still high have also been inoculated.

Sinopharm Chairman Liu Jingzhen claimed over a month ago that nearly one million people in China had already received one of these “emergency” vaccines and that only a small number had experienced mild adverse effects.

Four vaccines developed in China have reached Phase 3 clinical trials. These are two from Sinopharm, one from Sinovac, and one from CanSino Biologics.

The vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech in an exclusive partnership with Fosun Pharma in China has also conducted the trials. EFE-EPA

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