Chinese vaccine developer Sinopharm said data from a mid-phase III clinical trial analysis of one of its new crown vaccines showed an efficiency of 79%, taking the group one step closer to making the vaccine available at scale in China and overseas. Pfizer’s vaccine has a protection efficiency of 95%; U.S. biotech Moderna has a 94.1% protection efficiency. UK-based AstraZeneca plc. has a 70% protection rate; however, it also claims a 100% protection rate after two doses.
In particular, the AFP news agency has mentioned what Chinese President Xi Jinping has said: “We will strive to make vaccines a public product that is accessible and affordable to all people”.
China National Biotec Group, a subsidiary of China National Pharmaceutical Group, which developed the vaccine, published the results on its website on Wednesday. The company added that the data results met the minimum standards required by Chinese regulators and that a marketing application had been submitted.
The vaccine, one of two new crown vaccines being developed by Sinopharm, was approved this month in Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates. The two Gulf countries each previously said that the vaccine was 86% effective. The UAE government has begun providing the vaccine to 1 million of its own residents and 8 million foreign residents.
Neither Sinopharm nor regulators in Bahrain and the UAE have released details of the data analyzed, so it is not clear what caused the discrepancy between their reported effectiveness rates. Sinopharm did not respond to a reporter’s request for comment on the discrepancy.
The lack of transparency in data review and regulatory approval for Chinese vaccines has led international experts to question whether Chinese vaccines meet the best global standards.
On Monday, China’s foreign ministry defended the questioning of Chinese vaccines and reiterated that China’s new crown vaccine will be supplied to the world as a “global public product” once it is developed and put into use.
Both of Sinopharm’s vaccines, which use chemically inactivated SARS-CoV-2 virus to stimulate an immune response, will be the primary vaccines for distribution in China and developing countries.
More than 1 million people in China have already received the vaccine as part of the country’s emergency use program. Chinese officials said the program will be expanded this winter to all high-risk groups, including workers who travel abroad, medical professionals and the elderly, to prevent the re-emergence of the virus.
Many developing countries, which have difficulty getting vaccines from Western companies such as Moderna, BioNTech/Pfizer and Oxford/AstraZeneca, will likely rely on vaccines from Chinese pharmaceutical companies.
If Sinopharm’s vaccine still yields such efficacy rates in the final analysis of the Phase III clinical trial, it will be lower than the Modena vaccine and the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine, both of which have efficacy rates of more than 90%.
Sinopharm, one of China’s largest vaccine makers, expects to produce 1 billion doses of its two new inactivated coronavirus vaccines by the end of next year.
Two other Chinese pharmaceutical companies – Kexing (Sinovac) and CanSino Biologics – are also developing neo-crown vaccines.
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