3rd Chinese Covid-19 vaccine gets WHO nod, as CanSino viral vector jab cleared for emergency use

Name: WHO: Omicron still dangerous especially for unvaccinated though it causes less severe disease
Uploaded: 2022-05-19T12:15:52.000Z
Duration: 1 min 48 s
Description: WHO: Omicron still dangerous especially for unvaccinated though it causes less severe disease

Thursday’s WHO announcement follows similar listings last year for vaccines from Sinopharm and Sinovac Biotech

UN agency says the vaccine is 64 per cent effective against symptomatic disease and 92 per cent against severe cases

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CanSino Biologics follows Sinopharm and Sinovac Biotech in winning WHO approval for their coronavirus vaccines. Photo: Shutterstock

Holly Chik

Published: 8:15pm, 19 May 2022Updated: 2:13am, 20 May 2022

A Covid-19 vaccine from China’s CanSino Biologics has been approved for emergency use by the World Health Organization, making it the third such Chinese product and 11th overall to win the right to enter the global market.

The announcement follows similar WHO listings last year for vaccines made by Chinese companies Sinopharm and Sinovac Biotech.

The emergency use listing (EUL) for CanSino’s Convidecia adds “to a growing portfolio of vaccines validated by WHO for the prevention of Covid-19 caused by Sars-CoV-2”, the UN body said in a statement on Thursday.

The single-dose vaccine is 64 per cent effective against symptomatic disease and 92 per cent so against severe cases, according to the WHO.

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WHO: Omicron still dangerous especially for unvaccinated though it causes less severe disease

China approved CanSino’s viral vector-based vaccine in February as a mixed booster shot for its population, whereas the country’s mass vaccination campaign has relied heavily on the inactivated shots from Sinopharm and Sinovac.

Inactivated vaccines use dead material from the virus to jump-start the immune system, while those like CanSino’s use an adenoviral vector to deliver a virus antigen and trigger an immune response.