Chile regulator greenlights Sinovac COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use

The emergency approval, which comes after trial data in Brazil raised questions over the vaccine's true efficacy, would cover inoculations with just over 10 million doses of the Sinovac vaccine for Chileans over the age of 18. Ten members of the Public Health Institute's advisory board approved the vaccine roll-out, while two voted against it and one abstained.

Chile's health regulator approved the emergency roll-out of the CoronaVac COVID-19 vaccine manufactured by China's Sinovac Biotech Ltd, clearing the way for the Andean country to move up a gear in its inoculation effort against the virus. The emergency approval, which comes after trial data in Brazil raised questions over the vaccine's true efficacy, would cover inoculations with just over 10 million doses of the Sinovac vaccine for Chileans over the age of 18.

Ten members of the Public Health Institute's advisory board approved the vaccine roll-out, while two voted against it and one abstained. The two medical experts who voted against said they wanted to see more data on the vaccine trials. Heriberto Garcia, director of the Public Health Institute (ISP), said "very encouraging" data from late-stage trials and the ISP's own investigations suggested CoronaVac was a "safe and effective vaccine to fight the pandemic".

"It is proven as a vaccine that prevents hospitalizations and severe iterations of this disease," he said. Chile paid $3.5 million to host a clinical trial of the Sinovac vaccine and has ordered 60 million doses to be administered to its 18 million-strong population over three years.

A delivery around 2 million Sinovac doses was expected as early as Monday, the science ministry told Reuters. TRIAL DATA

The Sinovac vaccine has already been approved and is being rolled out in Brazil, Turkey and Indonesia. Data from the drug's late-stage clinical trial in Brazil earlier this month sparked concern among some other potential buyers after it showed the vaccine was 50.4% effective at preventing symptomatic infections, including "very mild" cases. Previously released data said CoronaVac showed 78% efficacy against "mild-to-severe" cases.

The ISP said data from the Chilean CoronaVac trial was not yet available, but it had weighed data from trials in other countries. The regulator sent two inspectors to the Sinovac factory in Beijing in November. Chile became the first country in South America to start vaccinating against COVID-19 with the arrival of 10,000 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine on Christmas Eve. Since then, the country has taken delivery a total of 154,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine.

The latest batch of 43,875 doses was delivered to Chile from Belgium early on Wednesday morning, despite the drugmaker last week saying there would delivery delays from its European hub. Chile has so far inoculated 29,368 people with one dose of the Pfizer vaccine, largely health workers and lately also pensioners, and 8,360 have received the second dose, according to health ministry figures.

Chile's ISP is also weighing approval of AstraZeneca's vaccine for emergency use - Chile has already ordered 14.4 million doses.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)