China Announces its Sinopharm Vaccine is 79% Effective Against COVID-19

China Announces its Sinopharm Vaccine is 79% Effective Against COVID-19.

Phase 3 trials of a Sinopharm coronavirus vaccine found it was 79 per cent effective, the Chinese pharma giant said today, Wednesday, which is lower than rival jabs developed by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna but still a potential breakthrough in the battle to stem the pandemic in Asia.

China has been racing against the West biotechs to develop its own Covid-19 vaccines, with five already in large-scale Phase 3 clinical trials. Wednesday’s announcement was the first data released regarding the efficacy of a Chinese vaccine candidate. “The protective effect of the (Sinopharm CNBG Beijing) vaccine against Covid-19 is 79.34 per cent,” said the Beijing Institute of Biological Products, a Sinopharm subsidiary.

Sinopharm has now applied to China’s drug regulator for approval of the inactivated coronavirus vaccine, which is a type of inoculation using particles of the pathogen.

However, China has struggled to gain international trust for its vaccine candidates, hindered by a lack of transparency on test results. It has also been slow to complete Phase 3 trials, which had to be conducted abroad due to China’s success at curbing the spread of Covid-19 within its own borders.

Chinese officials have repeatedly assured the public of the vaccines’ safety, claiming that there have been no serious adverse reactions. More than one million people have already been vaccinated with unapproved vaccines in China under its emergency use programme, including frontline health workers, state-owned enterprise employees and workers planning to travel abroad.

The United Arab Emirates approved a Sinopharm vaccine earlier this month, becoming the first foreign country to approve a China-developed Covid-19 vaccine. It said the vaccine was 86 per cent effective, according to interim results of a Phase 3 trial. Beijing has pledged to share the vaccine at a fair cost — a potential boost for poorer Asian countries who are otherwise reliant on limited distribution offered by the COVAX scheme.