Zeng Yixin, Vice Minister of National Health Commission, Director of the vaccine R&D working group under the State Council’s inter-agency task force, leaves after a press conference in Beijing on December 31, 2020. / AFP / Leo RAMIREZhas granted “conditional” market approval to a Sinopharm vaccine with a reported 79 percent efficacy rate against Covid-19, health authorities said Thursday, a major stride towards inoculating the world’s largest population.
Chen Shifei, deputy commissioner of the National Medical Products Administration, on Dec 31 told reporters his agency had granted a “conditional listing” to Sinopharm’s vaccine. The listing allows the government to “extend vaccination to high-risk groups, those susceptible to a severe viral infection... and the elderly,“ Zeng Yixin, Vice Minister of the National Health Commission told reporters.
China has also pledged to swiftly share its vaccines with lesser developed countries at a “fair price”, as it seeks global leadership in the recovery from a pandemic which first emerged in the central Chinese city of Wuhan a year ago.