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UAE is first government to officially approve Chinese coronavirus vaccine developed by Sinopharm
UAE approves ‘86 per cent effective’ Chinese coronavirus vaccine
- Review of Sinopharm’s interim analysis of phase three trials found ‘no serious safety concerns’, health ministry says
- UAE trials involved 31,000 people aged 18 to 60 from 125 countries
Wednesday’s statement issued by the UAE’s health ministry via the official WAM news agency gave few details. It said the ministry had worked with its counterparts in Abu Dhabi to review the interim results from the final stage trials of a vaccine developed by Sinopharm and the Beijing Institute of Biological Products.
The statement said 31,000 volunteers from 125 countries had been involved in the trials. It said the vaccine was 100 per cent effective in preventing moderate and severe cases of the disease and no serious safety concerns were found, though it did not give details of any side effects.
There was no mention of how many infections were found in the vaccinated group and the placebo group.
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Sinopharm and its subsidiary responsible for vaccine development, CNBG, has not issued any official statement about its final stage trials. Neither could be reached for comment on Wednesday.
Tuesday also saw the publication of the first detailed paper about the phase three trials of a drug developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca.
The data published in The Lancet showed that the Oxford vaccine has a efficacy of 62·1 per cent for recipients of two doses, but was much higher at 90 per cent for a small group, who were given one and a half doses by mistake.
The UAE statement came after Morocco decided on Tuesday to use a Sinopharm vaccine in an ambitious plan to inoculate 80 per cent of its adults starting this month.
“The registration of this vaccine is a decision in response to the application from Sinopharm CNBG. The announcement is a significant vote of confidence by the UAE’s health authorities in the safety and efficacy of this vaccine,” the UAE statement said.
Tao Lina, a Shanghai-based vaccine expert, described the efficacy as “quite good”, adding: “That means if there are 100 infections in the placebo group, there are only 14 infections in the vaccine group.
But he said that it remains unclear what level of antibodies can protect a person from infection as there are infections in the vaccine group although 99 per cent of them have developed antibodies.
The UAE started giving the Sinopharm vaccines to front-line health workers in September after approving its emergency use.
Senior politicians, including Dubai’s ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, have taken the jabs to show confidence in the vaccine.
It remains unclear why Sinopharm, which has two vaccines undergoing final stage trials, has not released its interim data.
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“If they do, we will study the data,” she said.
Cooke also said the agency was not under political pressure to speed up approvals and expected to complete its review of the Pfizer and BioNTEch vaccine by December 29 and to finalise its review of a vaccine from Moderna by January 12.
China has approved three vaccine candidates developed by Sinovac and state-owned Sinopharm for emergency use and given them to over a million people.
Meanwhile, Russia was the first country to grant regulatory approval for a vaccine, but raised safety fears by doing so before large-scale trials were complete.
Additional reporting by Reuters
