China authorized Thursday its first homegrown coronavirus vaccine for general use.
The Sinopharm vaccine had already been given to health care professionals and essential workers. The go-ahead should allow it to be supplied more broadly at home and moves Beijing closer to being able to ship it abroad.
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The announcement comes one day after British regulators authorized AstraZeneca's inexpensive and easy-to-handle vaccine.
Both shots have been closely watched by developing countries, many of which have been unable to secure the Pfizer and Moderna doses being snapped up by rich nations.
The greenlight came a day after the state-owned company announced that preliminary data from last-stage trials had shown it to be 79.3% effective. That announcement did not detail the size of the control group, how many people were vaccinated, and at what point the efficacy rate was reached after injection, and experts have cautioned that trial data needs to be shared.
Officials have said the vaccine standards were developed in "close cooperation" with the World Health Organization, which can assure the rest of the world about the quality of Chinese vaccines and open the path for the shots to be distributed in the global vaccine consortium.
China is eager to ship its vaccines globally, driven by a desire to repair the damage to its image caused by the pandemic that started a year ago in Wuhan.
Unlike the Pfizer and Moderna shots, which must be stored at ultra-cold or freezer temperatures, The Sinopharm and AstraZeneca vaccines can be stored at normal fridge temperatures.
Both shots, as well as Russia's Sputnik, are expected to supply much of the developing world. AstraZeneca is expected to cost about $2.50 a dose, while Russia has said its doses will be priced at $10 for the global market. Pfizer's vaccine costs about $20, while Moderna's is $15 to $25, based on agreements with the US government.
The Sinopharm shot is already under mass production, though officials did not answer questions about current capacity. It has already been approved in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, and is slated for use next in Morocco.
Other countries have also been buying doses of another Chinese vaccine candidate, made by Sinovac Biotech, such as Turkey, Indonesia and Brazil. Belarus and Argentina both launched mass vaccinations Wednesday using Russia's vaccine, and Guinea has begun giving it to government officials.
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