WHO grants emergency use authorization for China's Sinopharm vaccine

The World Health Organization announced Friday that it would list for emergency use a coronavirus vaccine made by Chinese firm Sinopharm, Report informs, citing The Washington Post.

The step means that the vaccine, developed by Sinopharm with the Beijing Institute of Biological Products, can be used to bolster WHO-backed efforts such as the COVAX initiative to share doses equitably around the world.

It is also a major boost in international recognition for Sinopharm’s vaccine and Chinese pharmaceutical research. It marks the first time that any Chinese-made vaccine received emergency authorization from the WHO.

“This expands the list of COVID-19 vaccines that COVAX can buy, and gives countries confidence to expedite their own regulatory approval, and to import and administer a vaccine,” WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a news briefing.

The WHO decision, reached by independent experts in a technical advisory group under consultation with the WHO’s Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization, approves a two-dose regimen for adults over the age of 18.

Though the Sinopharm vaccine is already in widespread use around the world, with an estimated 65 million doses administered, its developers have released limited information about the vaccine’s efficacy and side effects.

A SAGE report released this week said it was “very confident” the Sinopharm vaccine protects people ages 18 to 59, citing evidence from clinical trials in China, Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates.

The vaccine had a 79 percent efficacy rate in stopping symptomatic COVID-19 in adults between 18 and 59 years of age, the report found — lower than some high-performing US-backed vaccines, including those produced by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, but in the same range as AstraZeneca, another Western vaccine.

However, the report’s authors said they had a “low level of confidence” in the vaccine’s efficacy in people 60 and older, and a “very low confidence” in the data about potential side effects in that age group.