A front runner among China’s coronavirus vaccine developers has filed for approval to officially launch its product, after rival vaccines in the United States and Britain got a head start in proving the high efficacy of their candidates.
China National Pharmaceutical Group, known as Sinopharm and whose subsidiary company China National Biotec Group is developing two inactivated coronavirus vaccines, has filed for regulatory approve to launch the vaccines, Xinhua Finance reported on Tuesday, citing Sinopharm’s vice-general manager, Shi Shengyi.
The brief report did not specify which – or even how many – of the candidates would be reviewed. The two candidates, developed by different institutes under CNBG, have been testing for broad safety and efficacy, or how protective they are against unvaccinated groups, in 10 countries across South America and the Middle East. The safety and efficacy data has not been published.
But a senior CNBG executive, who preferred anonymity because the matter was sensitive, said the report by Xinhua Finance was “inaccurate” and the company had yet to file for an official launch. He also said the phase 3 data review had not been completed.
CNBG was contacted for official comment about the application to launch its product but did not respond.
The report came days after two US vaccines – one by Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech, and the other by Moderna – announced their candidates were about 95 per cent effective in protecting against Covid-19.
