BEIJING: Sinovac Biotech’s coronavirus vaccine candidate, CoronaVac, was approved in July for emergency use as part of a program in China to vaccinate high-risk groups such as medical personnel, a person familiar with the matter said.
China National Biotec Group (CNBG), a unit of state-owned pharmaceutical giant China National Pharmaceutical Group (Sinopharm), also said it had obtained emergency use approval for a coronavirus vaccine candidate on the social media platform WeChat on Sunday. .
CNBG, which has two candidate vaccines in phase 3 clinical trials, did not say which of its vaccines had been licensed for emergency use.
China has been administering COVID-19 experimental vaccines to high-risk groups since July, and a health official told state media in an interview broadcast last week that authorities may consider modestly expanding the emergency use program to try to prevent possible outbreaks during fall and winter.
Officially, China has given few details about which vaccine candidates have been given to high-risk people under the emergency use program and how many people have been vaccinated.
State media reported in June, ahead of the emergency use program, that employees of state-owned companies traveling abroad were allowed to take one of two vaccines that CNBG was developing, while China’s military had also approved the use of the CanSino Biologics vaccine candidate.
Seven coronavirus vaccines are in the final stages of testing around the world, and four of them are from China.
But no vaccine has yet passed the final stage of trials to prove it is safe and effective, conditions that generally must be met to gain regulatory approval for mass use. COVID-19 has killed more than 800,000 people worldwide.
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