Data from trials with 31,000 volunteers in the UAE showed that the vaccine is highly effective and does not pose serious concern, according to a report by the UAE Health Department.
The ministry said this success paved the way for widespread vaccine use and reopened the Gulf nation’s economy.
Developed by the company China National Biotec Group Co. (CNBG) of the Chinese pharmaceutical group Sinopharm, the vaccine has been used by hundreds of thousands of people according to emergency permission in China, but has not yet been approved for public use by any pharmaceutical regulator.
CNBG did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
With 86% efficiency, CNBG’s vaccine ranks among the most effective COVID-19 vaccines the world has seen, making it a potentially more favorable option for vaccination in the developing region with the majority of the world’s population compared to Western pioneering efforts.
Countries like Indonesia and Pakistan that have signed agreements with CNBG and a few others are now likely to follow suit, given China’s vaccine suitability for developing countries.
While the vaccine mRNA by Pfizer Inc. and Moderna Inc. showing more than 90% more efficacy, these vaccines pose a distribution challenge for some countries requiring storage facilities and trucks with deep freezing capacity. CNBG vaccine can be transported and stored at normal refrigerator temperatures.
The efficacy rate of the CNBG vaccine is also higher than the initial results from a vaccine co-developed by AstraZeneca Plc and University of Oxford, are said to have a 62% efficacy rate in the number of participants who received two full doses.
The CNBG vaccine is manufactured using an inactivated version of the coronavirus to give the human immune system a chance to fight them off. It is one of the first vaccine candidates entering a final human-testing phase just four months after the outbreak in Wuhan. Nearly a year of pandemic, the world had more than 68 million people infected and more than 1.5 million people died.
China has two other vaccine developers that are conducting end-stage trials globally. One of them, Beijing-based Sinovac Biotechnology Co. Ltd., is in the process of analyzing data from phase 3 trials in Brazil and is able to publish efficacy data within a few day.