London: The World Health Organisation has made its long-awaited decision on China’s Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccine, approving the jab for emergency use in all adults, meaning it can be rolled out globally.

The WHO said that based on the available data, the vaccine was 79 per cent effective against symptomatic and hospitalised cases of the disease for all ages. Clinical trials run by the state-owned company Sinopharm also showed that it had an efficacy rate of 79 per cent.

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WHO is recommending the vaccine, which has been used on millions of people around the world, for those aged 18 and over on a two-dose regimen with a spacing of three to four weeks between them.

The vaccine, officially named BBIBP-CorV, is in use in China, Egypt, United Arab Emirates, Pakistan and Bangladesh among other countries. It is different to the Chinese-developed CoronaVac used in Indonesia and Brazil, among others.

The emergency-used listing is a major coup for China. Sinopharm is the first non-Western vaccine to win WHO backing and sit alongside those produced by Pfizer/BioNTech, AstraZeneca/Oxford, Johnson & Johnson (Janssen) and Moderna.

It uses inactivated vaccine technology, the same type used for polio, rabies and hepatitis A vaccines, where dead virus particles are mixed with an adjuvant which boosts immune response.

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WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the approval had the potential to accelerate to vaccines access through the UN-backed COVAX scheme for low-income countries.

“This expands the list of COVID-19 vaccines that COVAX can buy, and gives countries confidence to expedite their own regulatory approval, and to import and administer a vaccine,” he told a virtual news conference.