China’s state-backed coronavirus vaccine protected 86% of people against Covid-19 in trials conducted in the United Arab Emirates, state media there reported, giving credence to the quickly developed shot that China intends to distribute around the developing world.
The data was from trials that included 31,000 volunteers in the UAE, which found the vaccine was highly effective in preventing moderate and severe cases of Covid-19 and had no serious safety concerns, according to the report, which cited the country’s Ministry of Health and Prevention.
The shot’s success now paves the way for full public use of the vaccine and a re-opening of the Gulf nation’s economy, the ministry said.
Developed by Sinopharm unit China National Biotec Group Co., the vaccine has already been administered to hundreds of thousands of people under emergency authorization in China, but it’s yet to receive public use approval from any drug regulators.
CNBG did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The vaccine’s 86% efficacy rate ranks among the most effective the world has seen, making CNBG’s shot a potentially more favorable option to vaccinate large swathes of population in the developing world than frontrunner western efforts. It’s on track to fulfill Chinese President Xi Jinping’s promise to make any Chinese shot a “global public good” as part of the effort to rehabilitate the Asian country’s image after the pandemic emerged from its city of Wuhan.
Countries like Indonesia and Pakistan have already signed deals with CNBG and others are now likely to emerge, given the vaccine’s suitability for developing countries.
While mRNA vaccines from Pfizer Inc. and Moderna Inc. showed higher efficacy of over 90%, those present distribution challenges for some nations as they require deep freeze facilities and trucks. CNBG’s vaccine can be transported and stored at normal refrigerated temperatures.
The protection rate of CNBG’s shot is also higher than the initial results from the vaccine co-developed by AstraZeneca Plc and the University of Oxford, which was found to protect 62% of trial participants when administered with two full doses.
In an early sign of how the vaccine could be a gamechanger, Abu Dhabi officials said that they would start working with local authorities to “resume all activities within two weeks,” including economic, tourism and cultural operations.
The CNBG vaccine was made using an inactivated version of the coronavirus to prime human immune systems to fight it. It was among the first vaccine candidates that raced into the crucial final stage of human trials just four months after the outbreak began in Wuhan. Nearly a year into the pandemic, over 68 million people have been infected and and more than 1.5 million killed.
China has two other vaccine developers conducting final-stage trials globally. One of them, Beijing-based Sinovac Biotech Ltd., is in the midst of analyzing data from its Phase III trial in Brazil and could release efficacy data within days.
— With assistance by Farah Elbahrawy, Dong Lyu, Abeer Abu Omar, and Claire Che
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December 09, 2020 at 01:12PM
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