China’s Sinovac vaccine has been shown to be 78% effective against Covid-19 in Brazilian trials at an advanced stage and offers total protection against severe cases of the disease, raising hopes that it can be used to immunize much of the developing world.
The Butantan Institute of Brazil, a São Paulo-based research center that tested CoronaVac in Phase 3 tests, said on Thursday that none of the volunteers who got the vaccine developed serious cases of Covid-19. More than 12,000 health professionals participated in Phase 3 tests in Brazil, the first country to complete Sinovac vaccine testing.
“It’s a great result,” said Luiz Carlos Dias, a member of the Covid-19 researchers’ task force at the State University of Campinas, in São Paulo. “If it can prevent serious cases, hospitalizations, deaths, it will help us to get out of this pandemic.”
The CoronaVac vaccine is less effective than those being developed by Moderna Inc. and jointly by Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE that have been shown to have 94.5% and 95% efficacy rates in tests, respectively. But CoronaVac can be kept in a standard refrigerator between 36 and 46 degrees Fahrenheit, making transport and storage in less developed countries easier and cheaper, infectious disease experts said.
Prashant Yadav, a global health expert at the Washington-based think tank Center for Global Development, said 78% is a rate high enough for many developing countries to consider using the vaccine and potentially good enough for the World Health Organization consider incorporating CoronaVac into its global distribution system.