China approves Sin’s coronavirus vaccine

The Chinese government has announced that it has approved “under conditions” the marketing of the vaccine against the coronavirus produced by the laboratory Sinopharm and the Beijing Institute of Biologics. On Wednesday, the pharmaceutical group reported that its vaccine was 79% effective.

At a National Medical Products Administration (NMPA) press conference, Chen Shifei, the state agency’s number two, said that “on December 30 (…) the application for registration of the vaccine inactivated from Sinopharm (…) conditionally ”and that the laboratory must continue the phase 3 clinical trials.

This type of conditional marketing allows offer the vaccine to the public when clinical trial analyzes have not yet been completed, but indicate that the product is effective, as is the case with the rest of the coronavirus vaccines.

Chen explained that according to local laws, a vaccine can be conditionally approved when it is “urgently needed to respond to major public health emergencies”. In addition, he assured that NMPA will continue to evaluate other coronavirus vaccines which are still under development to “ensure that all are safe and effective, and that their quality is controllable”.

At the same press conference, Vice Minister of Health Zeng Yixin reported that the authorization allows mass vaccination of at-risk groupslike the elderly and people with other chronic diseases.

“The third step will be to vaccinate the entire population,” added the minister, noting that vaccination of “60 to 70 percent” of China’s 1,400 million citizens will be necessary to ensure “the protection of the entire population” of the country. Zeng promised that the vaccine will be “free for all”.

The minister said the price of the vaccine will vary, although Sinopharm President Liu Jingzhen announced in August that the two doses needed would not exceed the value of 1,000 yuan ($ 153).

During the conference did not specify the number of doses to be producedAlthough Yang Xiaoming, the chairman of CNBG – a subsidiary of Sinopharm – told local media that the company’s production capacity is 120 million doses and that throughout 2021 they hope to expand it to 1 000 million.

President Xi Jinping has vowed to make Chinese vaccines a “global public good”. The country has already started delivering doses to countries like Indonesia and the United Arab Emirates.

In China, Zeng said that 3 million people at risk have been vaccinated since December 15 and the vaccination plan for 3 million more people has already started belonging to groups at risk.

According to health authorities, only a few mild allergic reactions have been reported. So far, only side effects – for example, fever – have been detected in less than 0.1 percent of cases, and only two in every million people who have received the vaccine have experienced severe symptoms such as allergies.

Of those 4.5 million doses injected into emergency vaccination programs in China, one million corresponds to the two Sinopharm vaccines – one approved today and the other developed in collaboration with the Institute of Biologics of Wuhan – and at the moment no Serious side effects have been reported after use.