Initially, China was ahead in the global race for developing coronavirus vaccines. Two of the Chinese corona vaccines such as Sinovac as well as Sinopharm are getting exported abroad too.
Top facts to know about Sinovac and the Sinopharm
Sinovac is a Beijing-based biopharmaceutical company. This vaccine developed by this company is mainly an inactivated vaccine. This mainly works by using some of the killed viral particles. This mainly exposes the body’s immune system to the virus without risking some serious disease response. A part of the coronavirus genetic code is being introduced into the body. This is mainly done to trigger the body to make viral proteins, which will be enough for training the body’s immune system to attack. This vaccine can be stored in the normal refrigerator at a temperature of about 2 to 8 degrees Celsius.
Sinopharm, which is mainly a Chinese state-owned company. This company is developing two different Covid-19 vaccines. This is similar to Sinovac, which are also inactivated vaccines.
The inactivated virus vaccines normally use the eroded form of disease virus to restore the body’s immune response. The Sinopharm vaccine normally uses this type of technology. The weakened virus vaccines normally contain a category of the living virus which has been weakened. This is not going to cause any type of serious disease in people having healthy immune systems.
The countries which mainly approved the Chinese corona vaccine
Sinopharm has signed a contract with the United Arab Emirates. According to some sources, the UAE govt mainly confirmed that the vaccine is 86% effective. Some of the other Asian countries like Singapore and Malaysia mainly signed the deal with Sinovac. In January 2021, Indonesia also opted for the Sinovac vaccine.
Turkey also has approved the corona vaccine from Sinovac. The company also signed the deal with Chile as well as Brazil. Pakistan is also planning to buy the corona vaccine from Sinopharm.
Some of the hurdles the Chinese corona vaccine is facing
The vaccine diplomacy of China is mainly facing difficulty across Southeast Asia. According to some sources, the Philippines drug authority has mentioned that the Sinovac vaccine is not effective for frontline health workers. According to two different Indonesian surveys, more than 40 percent of the people who were interviewed did not want to take the vaccine.
The pharmaceutical developers of China like Sinopharm and Sinovac have not published their phase three trial information in any of the standard medical journals. This insufficient data is mainly leaving many people unsure to take the vaccine or not. This has also not provided any information regarding the vaccine’s potential side effects as well as its efficacy among the different age groups.
As discussed above many of the countries have approved the use of the Chinese vaccine. In China, the corona vaccine has been applied to military personnel since last June 2020. But the manufacturer has not provided the efficacy of the data. But, only time will tell the efficacy of those Chinese vaccines.