China on Thursday approved two new vaccines against COVID-19, expanding its arsenal for immunization.
The National Medical Products Administration gave conditional approval to a vaccine from CanSino Biologics and another from state-owned Sinopharm. Both are already being used in select groups under emergency authorization. The country currently has four vaccines to immunize its population.
CanSino said its single-dose vaccine has 65.28% efficacy 28 days after injection. It can be stored at between two and eight degrees Celsius, making it more accessible to regions with fewer public health services, it said in a statement.
It is based on a harmless common cold virus, an adenovirus, to introduce the coronavirus spike gene into the body. The latter manufactures the spike proteins, generating an immune response. The technology is similar to those of the Astrazeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines, which use different adenoviruses.
It is the first COVID-19 vaccine created by a Chinese company that requires a single dose.
A subsidiary of Sinopharm, the Wuhan Institute of Biologics, said its vaccine project has an efficiency of 72.51%. It uses the same technology as an already approved vaccine from Sinopharma’s Beijing subsidiary, in which a live virus is killed and purified. The inactivated virus is delivered by injection, which elicits an immune response.
Neither company has released final safety and efficacy test data.
CanSino’s vaccine was developed in conjunction with a team led by military researcher Chen Wei at the Institute of Military Medicine under the Chinese Academy of Military Sciences.
The latest stage of testing involved more than 40,000 volunteers in Pakistan, Mexico, Chile, Argentina and Russia.
Mexico and Pakistan have approved the CanSino vaccine.
