Covid: A Chinese vaccine?

The United Arab Emirates today became the first government to approve a coronavirus vaccine developed in China, citing preliminary data that showed it was 86 percent effective.

In making the decision, officials relied on an early analysis of late-stage clinical trials by Sinopharm, the state-owned manufacturer, which also showed the vaccine had no serious side effects.

Chinese drugmakers have had to look abroad for clinical trials because the virus is largely under control in China — the more widespread the virus is in a country, the easier it is to confirm a vaccine’s efficacy. The Emirates is one of 10 countries — including Bahrain, Jordan, Peru and Argentina — where Sinopharm is testing two vaccines.

Chinese vaccines could be a huge boon to developing countries because they are less expensive and easier to transport than many competitors’. Sinopharm’s vaccine is made from coronaviruses that have been killed or weakened, a technique that has been used for decades in the influenza and polio vaccines, and experts say this type tends to have few adverse effects.

Nevertheless, today’s move comes with a few big asterisks.

Chinese officials and Sinopharm have not said anything about the approval, and when our reporter called a spokeswoman for Sinopharm, she hung up the phone and did not respond to follow-up calls and messages.

Scientists have also noted that the announcement was lacking in hard data and important details. It didn’t include the ages of the volunteers or the number of Covid-19 cases that were analyzed, for example.

So far the Emirati government has not indicated whether it would begin a mass immunization campaign for its citizens.
The New York Times