BEIJING (Reuters) – Different efficacy results for a Chinese COVID-19 vaccine released separately in China and the United Arab Emirates are both real and valid, a director of the China National Biotec Group (CNBG) told state media.
China on Thursday approved its first COVID-19 vaccine for general public use, a coup developed by a state-backed Sinopharm affiliate after the developer said the vaccine had shown 79.34% effectiveness based on an interim analysis of late stage clinical trials.
This rate is lower than the rate of 86% for the same vaccine reported by the United Arab Emirates on 9 December.
Countries have some differences in standards and procedures in diagnosing patients, and the final results of identifying COVID-19 have been different, Yang Xiaoming, president of Sinopharm’s CNBG, told Global Times, a tabloid published by People’s Daily. the official newspaper of the Communist Party of China.
“Therefore, there were differences between the comprehensive data from several countries that we analyzed and the data on the protection rate previously assessed by the UAE and Bahrain,” the Global Times was quoted as saying by Yang in a report released on Thursday.
“But these two results are both real and valid,” Yang said, without giving further details about the data.
CNBG did not participate in the analysis or review of clinical trial data published by regulators in the countries where its vaccine was tested, Yang said.
The vaccine, developed by the CNBG unit at the Beijing Biological Products Institute, along with another candidate from a CNBG unit in Wuhan, are being tested in Phase III clinical trials outside China.
Trials for CNBG candidates recruited more than 60,000 participants between the ages of 18 and 60, Yang said.
Reporting by Roxanne Liu and Ryan Woo; Montage by Kim Coghill