World
WHO approves emergency use of China’s Sinopharm vaccine
The World Health Organization (WHO) announced on Friday it had approved a COVID-19 vaccine from China’s state-owned drugmaker Sinopharm for emergency use.
The vaccine, one of two main Chinese shots that collectively have already been given to hundreds of millions of people in China and abroad, becomes the first COVID-19 shot developed by a non-Western country to win the WHO’s backing. It is also the first time the WHO has given emergency use approval to any Chinese vaccine for any infectious disease.
A WHO emergency listing is a signal to national regulators on a product’s safety and efficacy, and would allow the shot to be included in COVAX, the global program to provide vaccines mainly for poor countries.
