The World Health Organisation (WHO) on Friday finally granted conditional approval for China’s Sinopharm Covid-19 vaccine for emergency use — the first Chinese jab to receive the WHO’s green light. China was eagerly awaiting the global health body’s nod for it to aggressively push the vaccine among different countries.
The WHO on Friday said it had validated the “safety, efficacy and quality” of the Sinopharm jab developed by the Beijing Institute of Biological Products. China’s Sinopharm vaccine was authorised by 45 countries and jurisdictions for use in adults, with 65 million doses administered. But many countries hesitated using the vaccine as it has not secured recognition from the WTO.
The WHO said the addition of the vaccine had “the potential to rapidly accelerate Covid-19 vaccine access for countries seeking to protect health workers and populations at risk”. The two-jab vaccine is an inactivated vaccine called SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine (Vero Cell). Its easy storage requirements make it highly suitable for low-resource settings, the WHO press release said.
The decision on Friday to approve the vaccine for emergency use was made by the WHO’s technical advisory group, which reviewed the latest clinical data and manufacturing practices. It said the vaccine’s efficacy for symptomatic and hospitalised cases of Covid-19 was estimated to be 79%.
The WHO noted that few adults over the age of 60 were included in clinical trials, so efficacy could not be estimated for this age group. But it said there was no reason to think that the vaccine would act differently in older recipients.
However, the WHO has okayed Sinopharm usage from 18 years and above, clarifying lingering doubts about its usage for people above 59 years.
With little data released internationally early on, the effectiveness of the various Chinese vaccines has long been uncertain. Besides China, it is being used in Algeria, Cameroon, Egypt, Hungary, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Peru, the United Arab Emirates, Serbia and Seychelles, among others. An emergency use listing by the WHO paves the way for countries worldwide to quickly approve and import a vaccine for distribution, especially those states without an international-standard regulator of their own.
A decision is expected in the coming days on another Chinese vaccine developed by Sinovac, while Russia’s Sputnik vaccine is under assessment.
WHO also listed the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine for emergency use on 31 December 2020; two AstraZeneca/Oxford COVID-19 vaccines on 15 February 2021, produced by AstraZeneca-SKBio (Republic of Korea) and the Serum Institute of India; and COVID-19 vaccine Ad26.COV2.S developed by Janssen (Johnson & Johnson) on 12 March 2021.