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Beijing – Chinese health authorities announced Thursday that they have conditionally approved a coronavirus vaccine developed by state-run Sinopharm Laboratory.
It is the first vaccine approved for general application in China. The permit was issued at a time when the country is carrying out a vaccination campaign of 50 million people before the important celebration of the Lunar New Year in February.
Chen Shifei, deputy commissioner of China’s National Medical Products Administration, said at a news conference Thursday that the decision was made the day before.
The vaccine was developed by the Beijing Institute of Organic Products, a subsidiary of state-owned Sinopharm conglomerate. The company announced Wednesday that according to preliminary information from the last stage of testing, the vaccine has an effectiveness of 79.3%.
The definitive proof of its effectiveness will depend on more data being published.
Sinopharm is one of at least five Chinese developers competing globally to create vaccines against the disease that has killed more than 1.8 million people worldwide.
Conditional authorization means that investigations continue, and that authorities can request more information about the safety and effectiveness of certain populations with different health profiles, said Tao Lina, a former government immunologist.
In general, the term means that a drug or product in question could be restricted to certain age groups, he noted.
Authorities declined to mention a particular price. “Of course it will be at the limit of what a person can afford,” Senao Zheng Zhongwei, an official of the National Health Commission.
The Beijing Institute vaccine is already being manufactured on a large scale, although authorities did not answer questions about current production capacity.
“Production capacity is a dynamic and continuous process,” said Mao Junfeng, deputy director of the Consumer Products Industry Department at the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.