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The inoculation of a 90-year-old British woman on Tuesday marked the start of the first massive Covid-19 vaccination campaign in the UK, and will likely be followed by widespread vaccination globally in the coming months.
But while Britain’s is undoubtedly the first mass launch of the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine, it is not the first widespread use of a coronavirus vaccine per se. In China, about a million people have already received one of the Covid-19 vaccines being developed there, including employees and students of construction projects abroad, a move that raised concern among several health experts, as that the vaccine has not yet been approved by regulators. . Before Britain granted emergency authorization to the Pfizer vaccine, some countries had also used emergency approval to begin offering injections of Covid-19 from China to healthcare workers.
Currently, four Covid-19 vaccines from three Chinese companies are in an advanced stage: Sinopharm has two vaccines in development; the private biotechnology company Sinovac, which is publicly traded in the United States, has developed an injection called CoronaVac; and CanSino Biologics also has a candidate. Unlike the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, the Chinese candidates do not require ultra-cold storage, which makes them especially useful for developing countries.
Sinopharm vaccines have been tested on 60,000 volunteers in Argentina, Bahrain, Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, Morocco, Peru, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates as part of phase 3 trials. Sinovac’s CoronaVac has been tested in Brazil , Chile, Turkey and Indonesia, among others. No company has published information on efficacy.
In contrast, pharmaceutical giants such as Pfizer and Moderna made some findings from their trial data public at the last stage, while also providing the data to regulators for analysis. Canada followed the UK to give Pfizer emergency approval yesterday, and the US could do the same this week.
The UAE said yesterday that data from phase 3 trials conducted there showed that the Sinopharm injection it had used was 86% effective and confirmed that they had registered the vaccine, which is a necessary step for a drug to the foreigner is sold at home. The injection has been used for emergency health workers in the Gulf country since September. Last week, China’s coronavirus task force said a big announcement on vaccines was coming soon, which could signal another regulatory development.
These are the countries that could use Chinese vaccines extensively starting next year, judging by their confirmed orders tracked by a Duke University health initiative.
One Brazilian state has even set a timeline for when it expects to use CoronaVac. São Paulo, home to 46 million people and the richest state in the country, said it will begin a mass immunization campaign with the drug on January 25, starting with health professionals, indigenous groups and people over 60 years old.
São Paulo’s Butantan Institute, the country’s leading vaccine manufacturer, has been working with Sinovac to carry out phase 3 trials on 13,000 volunteers. He said he expects Sinovac to share data from those trials on December 15 and submit it to the country’s health regulator.
The state plans to vaccinate about 9 million people by the end of March and ship 4 million doses (covering 2 million people) to other states, assuming federal regulators approve. President Jair Bolsonaro has criticized São Paulo’s work with Sinovac, saying he would rather wait and have the country use the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine.
Courtesy of Muchlis Jr / Indonesian Presidential Palace / Handout via Reuters
