Brazil's Butantan to provide more efficacy data on Sinovac vaccine

Brazilian researchers will announce more efficacy data on Tuesday for the coronavirus vaccine made by China's Sinovac, an official said, after medical experts and regulators criticized what they called an incomplete disclosure last week. Jean Gorinchteyn, the Sao Paulo state health secretary, who oversees the biomedical center Butantan running trials of the vaccine in Brazil, said the new figures would be for "general efficacy" rather than the "secondary" data given last week.

Brazilian researchers will announce more efficacy data on Tuesday for the coronavirus vaccine made by China's Sinovac, an official said, after medical experts and regulators criticized what they called an incomplete disclosure last week.

Jean Gorinchteyn, the Sao Paulo state health secretary, who oversees the biomedical center Butantan running trials of the vaccine in Brazil, said the new figures would be for "general efficacy" rather than the "secondary" data given last week. On Thursday, researchers said the vaccine was shown to be 78% effective in a late-stage Brazilian trial against mild cases of COVID-19. But independent specialists called for more transparency on the findings from the Phase III trial of the Sinovac vaccine, known as CoronaVac.

Piecemeal disclosure of results from global CoronaVac studies have contributed to concerns that vaccines developed by Chinese producers are not subject to the same public scrutiny as U.S. and European alternatives. Brazilian health regulator Anvisa said on Saturday that a filing from Butantan seeking emergency use authorization for CoronaVac lacked some relevant information for analysis of the study, such as the age, gender and comorbidities of volunteers.