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Coronavirus pandemic
OpinionComment
Zha Daojiong
Zha Daojiong

Opinion | WHO’s Sinopharm approval opens the door to distributing Chinese vaccines abroad

  • In addition to dealing with spikes in India and Brazil, countries that border China should also receive priority for Chinese vaccines
  • Being active in Covax and other multilateral channels can help overcome geopolitical hurdles and ensure access to more foreign markets in the future

Reading Time:4 minutes
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Illustration: Craig Stephens
Zha Daojiong
May 7, 2021 will be seen as a milestone for China’s vaccine industry in the history of public health. That was the date the World Health Organization added a vaccine made by China’s Sinopharm to its emergency use listing for the Covid-19 pandemic.
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The development is historic given that the Sinopharm product is the first solely from a developing country to be included in a globally recommended treatment mechanism for dealing with an ongoing infectious disease. The five products already on the emergency use listing are made by companies in developed countries, except for one done as a collaboration with the Serum Institute of India, a company of global renown.

By way of contrast, Sinopharm only emerged in the international vaccines market in 2013, when it was pre-qualified to supply a product against a strain of encephalitis.
Before gaining emergency-use status, the Chinese vaccine was authorised for use in China and 40 other countries. Along the way, there were questions about the availability and quality of data, including in internationally recognised science publications such as Nature.

Yet, the global vaccine industry operates in a hierarchy between products approved by stringent regulatory authorities – those that set standards for the rest of the world – and those approved by national regulatory authorities. China’s vaccine approval authority is in the national category.

02:06

After ramping up vaccination drive with incentives, China administers 200 million Covid-19 shots

After ramping up vaccination drive with incentives, China administers 200 million Covid-19 shots

For a vaccine approved by the Chinese regulatory authority, examination of its data by the WHO’s Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization (Sage) is equivalent to review by a stringent regulatory authority.

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