The United Arab Emirates approved a Chinese coronavirus vaccine, citing preliminary data showing that it was 86% effective. The move, the first full approval of a Chinese vaccine by any nation including China, could bring the vaccine a step closer to widespread use around the world.
The announcement by the Emirates’ Ministry of Health and Prevention was the first official indicator of a Chinese vaccine’s potential to help stop the pandemic. If trials elsewhere produce similar findings, the Chinese vaccines could offer a lifeline to developing countries that cannot afford vaccines developed in Western nations that are likely to be more expensive and more difficult to store and distribute.
Chinese government officials and Sinopharm, the state-owned maker of the vaccine, were silent about the Emirati announcement. Scientists noted that the announcement was lacking in data and other critical details.
Sinopharm would not confirm or comment on the news, even hours after it was reported. A spokeswoman for the company hung up the phone when reached and did not respond to messages and calls afterward.
The news release from the Emirati government did not give important specifics, like the number of Covid-19 cases that were analyzed or the ages of volunteers, leaving it unclear to scientists how Sinopharm came to its conclusions about the vaccine’s effectiveness.
“The devil is in the details,” said Beate Kampmann, director of the Vaccine Center at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. “It’s very difficult to judge this without seeing the number of cases. The main thing is, the trial results need to be made public.”
Still, the news that a Chinese vaccine was found to be 86 percent effective comes as a boost to China’s biomedical ambitions, even though that figure falls short of the performance reported for vaccines developed by Pfizer and Moderna, which have said that their vaccines are more than 90 percent effective.
The vaccine could also help bring China closer to fulfilling a pledge by China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, to make a vaccine a “global public good.”
The Emirates is one of 10 countries where Sinopharm is testing two coronavirus vaccine candidates. The health ministry said it had reviewed an interim analysis of data from late-stage clinical trials that also showed the vaccine was 100 percent effective in preventing moderate and severe cases of the disease. It did not say whether it had conducted an independent analysis of the raw data. The ministry said there were no serious safety concerns.
[link url="https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/12/09/world/covid-19-coronavirus/a-chinese-vaccine-wins-its-first-approval-in-the-uae-which-says-it-is-86-percent-effective"]Full New York Times report (subscription required[/link]