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SINGAPORE: China is in talks for the World Health Organization to evaluate its locally produced Covid-19 vaccines as a step towards their availability for international use, a WHO official said on Tuesday.
Hundreds of thousands of essential workers and other groups considered high-risk in China have received locally developed vaccines even when clinical trials had not been fully completed, raising safety concerns among experts.
Socorro Escalate, WHO’s coordinator for essential drugs and health technologies in the Western Pacific region, told an online press conference that China had held preliminary talks with the WHO to list its vaccines for emergency use.
The WHO emergency use listing procedure allows the evaluation of unlicensed vaccines and treatments to accelerate their availability in public health emergencies.
This helps WHO member states and UN procurement agencies determine the acceptability of vaccines.
“Potentially, through this emergency use, the quality and safety of these vaccines could be evaluated and efficacy could be evaluated … and then this could be made available to our licensees,” Escalante said.
China has at least four experimental vaccines in the final stage of clinical trials: two are developed by the state-backed China National Biotec Group (CNBG), and the remaining two are from Sinovac Biotech and CanSino Biologics, respectively.
They are tested in countries like Pakistan, Indonesia, Brazil, Russia, and the United Arab Emirates.
Last month, the United Arab Emirates authorized the emergency use of a CNBG vaccine, the first international emergency authorization for one of China’s vaccines, just six weeks after human trials began in the Arab Gulf state.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said last month that he would give priority to China and Russia in the global purchase of vaccines from his country.
