Chinese drug regulators formally accepted the country's leading vaccine producer Sinopharm's application for its COVID-19 vaccines' market rollout on Wednesday, which marks a closer step to China's approval for this vaccine candidate to combat the coronavirus, Report states, citing TASS.
The Center for Drug Evaluation of China's National Medical Products Administration has formally accepted the application and started the examination procedure.
Chinese experts predicted that conditional approval could be granted from January 1, 2021.
Chinese state-owned pharmaceutical company Sinopharm announced earlier that It plans to produce up to 1 billion doses of coronavirus vaccines in 2021.
Beijing-based Sinovac Biotech previously announced it had raised more than $ 500 million in investment to produce 600 million doses of its vaccine annually.