Second Chinese COVID-19 Vaccine 78% Effective, Brazil Says
Authorities in Brazil have released the long-anticipated results for a Chinese-developed COVID-19 vaccine trial in the South American country, saying it appears to be 78% effective in preventing the disease.
Dimas Covas, director of the Butantan Institute in São Paulo, which conducted the clinical trial, also said during a press conference Thursday that the vaccine developed by Chinese pharmaceutical giant Sinovac can prevent severe cases of COVID-19 from developing 100% of the time.
The vaccine, dubbed CoronaVac, is the second Chinese coronavirus vaccine shown to be effective in large-scale human trials. Last week, another Chinese pharmaceutical company, Sinopharm, said its vaccine is 79% effective.
No detailed data on either vaccine trial has been released to the public.
In December, Brazil announced that CoronaVac had shown an efficacy of above 50%, without giving a more precise figure. Authorities in the country said Sinovac had requested that the announcement of an efficacy rate be postponed so the company could gather and analyze data from trials being conducted in other countries including Indonesia, Turkey, and Chile.
In November, the Brazilian government suspended CoronaVac’s late-stage trial due to an unspecified “adverse event.” According to Reuters, the incident was an unrelated suicide, and authorities resumed the trial within two days.
Editor: David Paulk.
(Header image: Doses of Sinovac’s COVID-19 vaccine are unloaded from a Turkish Airlines flight at Esenboğa Airport in Ankara, Turkey, Dec. 30, 2020. Mehmet Ali Özcan/Anadolu Agency via People Visual)
