China estimates to contribute 10 million doses of vaccines to the Covax mechanism, close to delivering doses in Latin America

Beijing –

China plans to supply 10 million doses of Covid vaccines to the Covax global access fund of the World Health Organization (WHO), once three pharmaceutical companies from the Asian giant have asked to join this initiative, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs reported today. Exteriors.

Covax is a public-private initiative, supported by WHO and the global vaccine alliance GAVI, to promote equitable access to SARS-CoV-2 vaccines around the world.

The fund plans to begin supplying vaccines to low- and middle-income countries this month, and expects to distribute between 2 billion and 3 billion doses throughout the year.

The three Chinese pharmaceutical companies that have requested to join the initiative are Sinovac Biotech, Sinopharm and CanSino Biologics, all vaccine producers that have completed the last phase of clinical trials.

Sinovac and Sinopharm vaccines are already being used or planned to be used in countries in Latin America, the Middle East and Asia, such as Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Bolivia, United Arab Emirates, Turkey or Indonesia, while that of CanSino Biologics received approval last July for use in the Chinese Army.

Hungary, distancing itself from the European Union, has also closed a contract to purchase five million doses from Sinopharm, of which Peru expects to receive one million.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin announced today that the three companies will supply 10 million doses to Covax, although he did not provide further details.

The WHO must first review and approve your application to be part of the program, for which it has created a group of experts who verify in China that they meet the quality requirements established internationally.

The international health organization has so far only authorized the emergency use of the Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine,in a procedure that serves as a guide for dozens of developing countries that do not have the technical capacity to approve this type of products.

On December 31, the Chinese authorities gave the green light for the first time to the marketing of one of the covid vaccines developed in the country, that of Sinopharm and its subsidiary Beijing Institute of Biological Products.
Both companies reported vaccine efficacy at 79.34%, based on interim data from Phase 3 clinical trials.

The president of CNBG - a subsidiary of Sinopharm on which the Beijing Institute of Biological Products depends -, Wu Yonglin, assured then that the tests were carried out with standards "that exceed those that exist, even those of the WHO."