China’s drug authorities have given “conditional” approval for a second COVID-19 vaccine, Sinovac’s CoronaVac jab, the pharmaceutical company said on Saturday.
The vaccine has already been rolled out to key groups at higher risk of exposure to coronavirus but Saturday’s approval allows for its use on the general public.
A conditional approval helps speed-up emergency supply of drugs to market in cases where clinical trials are yet to meet normal standards but indicate therapies will work.
The approval comes after multiple domestic and overseas trials of the vaccine in countries including Brazil and Turkey, although “efficacy and safety results need to be further confirmed”, Sinovac said in a statement.
Fellow Chinese pharmaceutical company Sinopharm received a similar conditional green light in December to put its vaccine on the market.
Sinovac said trials in Brazil had shown around 50% efficacy in preventing infection and 80% efficacy in preventing cases requiring medical intervention.
Sinopharm said in December that its vaccine had a 79.34% efficacy rate, lower than rival jabs developed in the West by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna — with 95 and 94% rates, respectively.
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