Coronavirus: Taiwan’s home-grown vaccine is approved for emergency use in Paraguay

Name: All eyes on Taiwan’s home-grown vaccines as 2 local developers await emergency approval
Uploaded: 2022-02-15T10:15:05.000Z
Duration: 2 min 34 s
Description: All eyes on Taiwan’s home-grown vaccines as 2 local developers await emergency approval

Medigen says phase 3 trial participants given the jab generated 3.7 times as many neutralising antibodies as those getting AstraZeneca

Its shots have been administered to 1.92 million people in Taiwan since its roll-out in August

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Taiwan’s domestically developed Medigen Vaccine Biologics Corp’s Covid-19 vaccine has been approved for emergency use in Paraguay, an ally of the island. Photo: Reuters

Lawrence Chung

Published: 6:15pm, 15 Feb 2022Updated: 7:48pm, 15 Feb 2022

Taiwan’s home-grown Covid-19 vaccine has been authorised for emergency use in Paraguay, the only domain other than the self-ruled island to give such approval for the jab.

After a months-long phase 3 clinical trial in the South American country, Medigen Vaccine Biologics, a Taiwan-based biopharmaceutical company, received emergency use authorisation (EUA) after unblinding of the trial showed the vaccine was not only effective, but also “superior”, according to the company.

The company applied to start the clinical trial in October in cooperation with the faculty of the school of medical sciences at the National University of Asuncion.

Medigen said the trial compared the recipients of vaccines developed by Medigen and AstraZeneca – a British-Swedish multinational pharmaceutical and biotechnology company – via the immunobridging technique, which uses the immune responses measured in trial participants to infer a vaccine’s overall level of protection.

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All eyes on Taiwan’s home-grown vaccines as 2 local developers await emergency approval

“[Trial results] showed that those receiving Medigen vaccines generated 3.7 times as many neutralising antibodies as those getting the AstraZeneca jabs, meeting the standard for ‘superiority’,” the company said in a statement on Monday night.