And one more! The World Health Organization announced this Tuesday June 1 that Chinese Sinovac vaccine has been given the green light to be distributed worldwide.
The WHO granted approval for emergency use of the vaccine so it can be added to the Covax system, an international alliance enabling to distribute doses of Covid-19 vaccines to disadvantaged countries. France is contributed to this process and announced they want to give 500,000 doses of AstraZeneca to countries in Africa.
Dr Mariângela Simão, WHO Assistant-Director General for Access to Health Products explained “the world desperately needs multiple COVID-19 vaccines to address the huge access inequity across the globe”.
So, to help as many people as possible, while waiting for WHO to approve the lifting of patents on vaccines, the world health institution multiplies approval for marketing vaccines.
Experts recommend two injections of Sinovac to adults from and over 18 years of age. Two doses must be made two to four weeks apart. Clinical trials show Sinovac is 57% effective to prevent symptomatic Covid cases. This effectiveness goes up to 100% in the prevention of severe and clinical cases related to coronavirus. WHO also justifies their choice saying “its easy storage requirements make it very manageable and particularly suitable for low-resource settings”.
As of today, WHO has approved the use of 6 Covid serums: Moderna, Pfizer-BioNTech, Johnson & Johnson, and the two AstraZeneca serums produced in India and South Korea (the two serums are identical, but the Organization has delivered two different approvals). Since May 7, another Chinese vaccine has been approved: Sinopharm.
WHO’s approval system is a process aiming at defining the effectiveness and the degree of safety of a vaccine produced by a laboratory.
The AFP reminds Sinovac is already used in about twenty countries including China, Tunisia, Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Thailand and Turkey.
