BY Ebunoluwa Olafusi
China’s National Medical Products Administration (NMPA) has given a conditional approval for the public use of its second locally made COVID-19 vaccine — CoronaVac.
The approval comes a month after Sinopharm, another Chinese pharmaceutical company, received a similar nod for its vaccine.
In December, the country had approved the conditional use of Vero, its first COVID-19 vaccine, after Sinopharm said it was found to be 79.3-percent effective in preliminary data from its phase three trial.
In a statement on Saturday, Sinovac Biotech, producer of CoronaVac, said the approval of the vaccine is based on late-stage clinical trials in countries including Brazil, Indonesia and Turkey.
Though the vaccine has been given approval, research into the vaccine is still ongoing and the company will be required to submit follow-up data, including reports of any adverse effects after the vaccine is sold on the market.
The efficacy of the vaccine also varies in the different countries of trial.
According to Sinovac, the vaccine was found to be 50.65 per cent effective against COVID-19 in the Brazil trial which recruited 12,396 health workers older than 18. It also found it to be 83.7 per cent effective against the disease that requires medical intervention.
The success rate from the Turkey trial was 91.25 per cent based on a preliminary analysis of 29 cases while the efficacy rate in Indonesia trial was 65.3 per cent.
Prior to the approvals, both vaccines have already been rolled out to key groups deemed to be at higher risk of exposure to the virus.
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