After Mexico, Pak approves China’s CanSinoBIO vaccine for emergency use

Pakistan on Friday approved China’s CanSinoBIO coronavirus vaccine for emergency use, making it the second country after Mexico to approve the jab.

Earlier, Pakistan had approved vaccines developed by China’s Sinopharm, Oxford-AstraZeneca, and Russia’s Sputnik V for emergency use. The country began vaccination drive against COVID-19 with 5,00,000 doses of Sinopharm donated by China on February 3.

As reported by WION, CanSinoBIO last week released interim efficacy results from a multi-country trial, which included Pakistan, showing 65.7% efficacy in preventing symptomatic coronavirus cases and a 90.98% success rate in stopping severe infections.

In the Pakistani subset, efficacy of the CanSinoBIO vaccine at preventing symptomatic cases was 74.8% and 100% at preventing severe disease.