The World Health Organization approved Sinopharm's COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use, which will give poorer nations access to a vaccine against the global pandemic. The inactivated vaccine was developed in early 2020 by the Beijing Institute of Biological Products and licensed to Sinopharm. It is approved for use in China and several other nations. In clinical trials conducted by Sinopharm, it was effective in 79% of the people who received it, though Sinopharm has not released a full data set from its trials. Next week, WHO will review a second China COVID-19 vaccine, this one from Sinovac.  

Following the WHO approval, the vaccine will now included in Covax, the WHO program that distributes vaccines to the world. It is estimated that the Sinopharm vaccine has already been administered to 65 million people.

“This expands the list of Covid-19 vaccines that Covax can buy, and gives countries confidence to expedite their own regulatory approval, and to import and administer a vaccine,” WHO director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a news briefing on Friday.

In a New York Times article, Andrea Taylor, who analyzes global data on vaccines at the Duke Global Health Institute, called the potential addition of two Chinese vaccines into the Covax program a “game changer. The situation right now is just so desperate for low- and lower-middle-income countries that any doses we can get out are worth mobilizing,” Ms. Taylor said. “Having potentially two options coming from China could really change the landscape of what’s possible over the next few months.”

Although China has claimed it can make up to 5 billion doses by the end of this year, Chinese officials say the country is struggling to manufacture enough doses for its own population and may have only limited supplies of the vaccine for global use. Sinovac says it has capacity to make 2 billion doses this year by itself.

“This should be the golden time for China to practice its vaccine diplomacy. The problem is, at the same time, China itself is facing a shortage,” said Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations. “So in terms of global access to vaccines, I don’t expect the situation to significantly improve in the coming two to three months.”

WHO had access to Sinopharm's Phase III data as part of its review process. However, one of the unknowns, even to the WHO panel, is the vaccine's efficacy against new COVID variants, which were not as prevalent when Sinopharm was conducting its Phase III studies.  

See our other articles on Sinopharm and Sinovac.

Disclosure: none.