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Health & Medicine
Pradeep Kumar

09/05/21 12:00 PM IST

WHO approves China’s Sinopharm vaccine

In news

The World Health Organization on approved the Sinopharm the first Chinese COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use 

Highlights
  • The UN health agency signed off on the two-dose vaccine, which is already being deployed in dozens of countries around the world.
  • The WHO has already given emergency use listing to the vaccines being made by Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, J&J, and the AstraZeneca jab being produced at sites in India and in South Korea. “
  • The WHO recommended that the two Sinopharm shots be taken three to four weeks apart.
  • The vaccine’s efficacy for symptomatic and hospitalised cases of COVID-19 was estimated to be 79% when all age groups are combined.
  • The agency said few adults over 60 were enrolled in clinical trials of the vaccine, so its efficacy could not be estimated in that age group.
How it works?
  • The Sinopharm vaccine is an inactivated coronavirus vaccine, like Covaxin developed by Bharat Biotech India (BBIL) in collaboration with the National Institute of Virology (NIV).
  • Inactivated vaccines take the disease-carrying virus (in this case SARS-CoV-2) and kill it using heat, chemicals or radiation.
Significance
  • The objective is to make medicines, vaccines and diagnostics available as rapidly as possible to address the emergency, while adhering to stringent criteria of safety, efficacy and quality.
  • The assessment weighs the threat posed by the emergency as well as the benefit that would accrue from the use of the product against any potential risks.
Source: Indian Express

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