The World Health Organization, or WHO, has approved the COVID-19 vaccine from Chinese pharmaceutical company Sinovac for emergency use.

     The Sinovac-CoronaVac vaccine is the second China-made COVID-19 vaccine to gain authorization from the world health body, after a separate treatment from drug company Sinopharm was validated in early May.

     WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus: Today, I’m happy to announce that the Sinovac-CoronaVac vaccine has been given WHO Emergency Use Listing after being found to be safe, effective and quality assured following two doses of the inactivated vaccine.

Furthermore, the easy storage requirements of CoronaVac make it very suitable for low-resource settings. It is now the eighth vaccine to receive Emergency Use Listing by WHO. It’s now crucial to get these lifesaving tools to the people that need them quickly.

The WHO Emergency Use Listing Procedure (EUL) is a risk-based procedure for assessing and listing unlicensed vaccines, therapeutics and in vitro diagnostics with the ultimate aim of expediting the availability of these products to people affected by a public health emergency. This will assist interested UN procurement agencies and Member States in determining the acceptability of using specific products, based on an essential set of available quality, safety, and efficacy and performance data.

Along with the Sinovac and Sinopharm jabs, the WHO has so far given emergency approval to vaccines from Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca, and Johnson & Johnson. A third Chinese vaccine, from CanSino Biologics, has submitted clinical trial data for review.

On Tuesday, the WHO said efficacy results for the Sinovac jab showed the vaccine prevented symptomatic disease in 51 percent of those vaccinated, and prevented severe COVID-19 and hospitalization in 100 percent of the studied population. Real-world data shows that efficacy in preventing symptomatic disease may be higher than trials suggest. Last month, Indonesia’s health ministry said the vaccine showed 94 percent efficacy at preventing symptomatic infection in 120,000 vaccinated healthcare workers.

The world desperately needs multiple COVID-19 vaccines to address the huge access inequity across the globe,” said Mariangela Simao, who is the WHO assistant-director general for Access to Health Products. “We urge manufacturers to participate in the COVAX Facility, share their knowhow and data and contribute to bringing the pandemic under control.”

“Sinovac could have quite a big impact because it can be stored closer to room temperature, so you can use it in remote regions of the world quite easily,” Caroline Casey, lead COVID-19 analyst at science analytics company Airfinity, told China Daily in a previous interview.