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

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

Covax is a public-private initiative, supported by WHO and the GAVI Global Vaccination Alliance, to promote access to SARS-CoV-2 vaccines in an equitable manner worldwide.

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

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

The 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, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey or Indonesia, while the one from CanSino Biologics received last July approval for use in the Chinese Army.

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

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

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 product.

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

The president of CNBG - a Sinopharm subsidiary on which the Beijing Institute of Biological Products depends - Wu Yonglin said at the time that the tests were carried out with standards "that surpass existing ones, even those of the WHO."