China provides COVID-19 vaccines to nearly 100 countries

On Jul 12, 2021

CHILE, URUGUAY, TURKEY, THAILAND: China is the world’s largest vaccine supplier, having supplied more than 480 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines to the international community, provided vaccine assistance to nearly 100 countries, and exported vaccines to more than 50 countries. With Chinese vaccines being administered worldwide, they have been found, according to multiple studies, highly effective in preventing infection, hospitalization, severe illness and death from the virus.

China’s CoronaVac COVID-19 vaccine effectively prevented COVID-19 in Chile, with the adjusted vaccine effectiveness reaching 90.3 percent for the prevention of severe disease, according to a study recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Among those who were fully immunized, the adjusted vaccine effectiveness was 65.9 percent for the prevention of COVID-19, 87.5 percent for the prevention of hospitalization, and 86.3 percent for the prevention of COVID-19-related death, the results of the study showed.

The CoronaVac, also known as the Sinovac COVID-19 vaccine, is an inactivated virus COVID-19 vaccine developed by Chinese pharmaceutical company Sinovac Biotech.

Interim analysis of Phase 3 clinical trial of the CoronaVac vaccine in more than 10,000 participants in Turkey suggests the efficacy of two doses of the vaccine is 83.5 percent against symptomatic cases of COVID-19, according to a study published in The Lancet, a weekly peer-reviewed general medical journal.

The vaccine can be stored and transported at 2 to 8 degrees Celsius and has been in Phase 3 trials since mid-2020 in Brazil, Indonesia, Chile, and Turkey, according to The Lancet.

“One of the advantages of CoronaVac is that it does not need to be frozen, making it easier to transport and distribute. This could be particularly important for global distribution, as some countries may struggle to store large amounts of vaccine at very low temperatures,” said Murat Akova, lead author of the study and a professor at Hacettepe University School of Medicine in Ankara.

The COVID-19 mortality rate among Uruguayans aged 18 to 69 who were vaccinated with Sinovac vaccine fell by more than 95 percent, according to the latest Vaccine Effectiveness report from the Public Health Ministry. Two weeks after receiving the second dose of the CoronaVac vaccine, developed by Chinese drugmaker Sinovac, mortality fell by 95.3 percent among the vaccinated population aged 18 to 49, and by 95.2 percent among those aged 50 to 69, showed the report.

Meanwhile, CoronaVac reduced hospitalization in intensive care units by 94.4 percent among those under the age of 49 and by 92.2 percent among people aged 50 to 69.

A new vaccination study conducted by Thailand’s Chulalongkorn University has found that China’s Sinovac vaccine has extremely high efficacy in boosting immune responses against COVID-19, according to media reports.

The study run by the Center of Excellence in Clinical Virology of the Faculty of Medicine at the university showed that 99.49 percent of the recipients had developed antibody responses four weeks after their second shots, the Bangkok Post said, quoting the study results. – XINHUA