China ponders approving 2 more covid vaccines

BEIJING — China is moving ahead with two more covid-19 vaccines in the regulatory process, one from state-owned company Sinopharm and another from a private company CanSino.

Both vaccines have been submitted to regulators for approval this week. CanSino said that Chinese regulators are reviewing its application for its covid-19 vaccine, in a stock filing on Wednesday. Sinopharm’s subsidiary the Wuhan Institute of Biological Products announced Wednesday that it had submitted an application Sunday and that regulators were reviewing it.

China already has approved two vaccines that it has been using in a mass immunization campaign. One of them is also from Sinopharm, but it was developed by its Beijing subsidiary. The other is the Sinovac vaccine.

The Wuhan shot from Sinopharm is 72.51% effective, the company said. Both shots from Sinopharm rely on inactivated viruses, a traditional technology.

CanSino’s vaccine is a one-dose shot that relies on a harmless common cold virus, called an adenovirus, to deliver the spike gene of the virus into the body. The technology is similar to both AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson’s vaccines, which rely on different adenoviruses.

CanSino’s vaccine is 65.28% effective, the company said Wednesday.

Neither company has published its trial data in peer-reviewed scientific journals yet.