New Chinese Covid-19 vaccine targeting multiple variants is approved in UAE
- Sinopharm’s ‘second-generation’ jab found to be able to stimulate antibodies against virus and unspecified ‘major variants’
- UAE approves it for emergency use as a booster after study involving people already vaccinated with two doses of Sinopharm’s previous vaccine
China National Biotec Group (CNBG), the vaccine development arm of Sinopharm, said on Monday that the vaccine would be provided as a booster for those who had previously taken its vaccines, but did not state which variants the vaccine protected against.
01:45
South Korea latest country to approve Pfizer Covid-19 pill
The vaccine had been given to nearly 2,000 people in the UAE during a study, with preliminary results indicating it was “safe and well tolerated, and can stimulate high levels of neutralising antibodies against the prototype strain and major variants”, it said.
The vaccine is not in use in China, but CNBG announced in September that it had developed a second-generation protein vaccine targeting not only the original virus but also other variants including Delta. The world’s first generation of vaccines had based their designs solely on the original strain of the virus.
