The vaccine Sinovac-CoronaVac “It meets international standards of safety, efficacy and manufacturing,” the World Health Organization (WHO) said in a statement this Monday, coinciding with its approval for emergency use against covid-19.
The WHO has also indicated that its technical advisers visited the facilities of the Pekingese laboratory before issuing its decision.
It is the sixth manufacturer to make it onto the emergency use list, after vaccines from Pfizer (the first to do so), Moderna, AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson and Sinopharm, the first Chinese to get the green light to do so. Begginings of may.
Sinopharm and Sinovac are also the first covid-19 vaccines approved by the WHO without previously having a similar decision by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) or the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) .
The emergency use clearance gives these vaccines a chance to enter the COVAX program, created by WHO in cooperation with other agencies to distribute low-priced and equitable doses of covid vaccines worldwide.
The WHO emphasizes that Sinovac is an inactivated virus vaccine, easy to store and transport, and its experts recommend its use in people over 18 years of age, to whom two doses should be administered with an interval of between two and four weeks.
Studies indicate that the Sinovac vaccine is only 51% effective in reducing symptomatic cases of COVID-19, although the percentage rises to 100% for severe cases and those requiring hospitalization.
WHO advisers warn that there are no data on the efficacy of the vaccine in people over 60 years of age, since few subjects above that age participated in clinical trials, although this does not lead them to recommend a maximum age to use it , since in vaccination campaigns it has been shown to be effective in older people.
