The World Health Organization approved China’s emergency Covid-19 vaccine from Sinopharm on Friday, making it easier for poorer nations to get another much-needed shot to end the pandemic.
The approval enables Sinopharm vaccine to be included in Covax, the World Health Organization’s global initiative to promote the equitable distribution of vaccines around the world.
The need is urgent.
Rich countries hoard cans. India, a major vaccine maker, has stopped exporting to deal with the deepening coronavirus crisis. Questions about the safety of extremely rare side effects led some countries to briefly discontinue the use of AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson or to change their guidelines for use.
Reliable access to vaccines could continue to improve next week if WHO considers another Chinese shot from the Sinovac company.
Andrea Taylor, who analyzes global data on vaccines at the Duke Global Health Institute, described the possible inclusion of two Chinese vaccines in the Covax program as a “game changer”.
“The current situation is so desperate for low- and lower-middle-income countries that it is worth mobilizing all the doses we can get out of it,” said Ms. Taylor. “Possibly having two options from China could really change the landscape of the possible in the next few months.”
But the fanfare can be short-lived. While China has claimed it could produce up to 5 billion cans by the end of this year, Chinese officials say they are struggling to make enough cans for their own people and are warning a pandemic-weary world to keep expectations in check .
“This should be the golden time for China to practice vaccine diplomacy. The problem is also that China itself is facing a shortage, ”said Yanzhong Huang, Senior Fellow on Global Health at the Council on Foreign Relations. “In terms of global access to vaccines, I don’t expect the situation to improve significantly in the next two to three months.”
Still, the approval marks a high point in vaccine diplomacy efforts and an opportunity to fill the void that Western nations and drug companies have left in low and middle income countries. Sinopharm is the first Chinese shot to be classified as safe and effective by the WHO, and its approval could allay concerns about the lack of transparency by Chinese vaccine companies.
Regulators from China and other countries have approved the Sinopharm vaccine in the past few months, although the company has not released data on phase 3 clinical trials that scientists can independently evaluate.
The WHO had access to this data prior to the announcement, but there is limited data on how well the vaccine will work against the many coronavirus variants that are found around the world.
