AstraZeneca and Sinovac sought COVID-19 vaccine approval in Brazil
Officials said that COVID-19 vaccines developed by Sinovac and AstraZeneca-Oxford filed the first applications for regulatory approval in Brazil.
Federal health regulator Anvisa had 10 days to respond to the applications, although it said that this could include asking the sponsors for more information.
One application was submitted by the Butantan Institute — a public health center in Sao Paulo that’s working with Chinese vaccine maker Sinovac to test and produce its COVID-19 vaccine — and the other one was from the Fiocruz Foundation, which was based in Rio de Janeiro and was working with the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca, in a similar partnership.
The said applications came a day after officials in Brazil announced that Sinovac COVID-19 vaccine had shown the effectiveness of 78% in clinical trials in Brazil, news that Sao Paulo Governor Joao Doria called it “historic”.
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Sinovac had not yet released the worldwide results from the final stage of clinical trials for its COVID-19 vaccine, which were also being carried out in Indonesia, Chile, and Turkey.
As for the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine, results published in December found it was 62% effective for volunteers given two full doses and 90% effective for those given a half dose followed by a full dose.
However, both vaccines appeared to be short of the more than 90% effectiveness reported for the vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna.
The Sinovac and AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccines had been caught up in a political battle in Brazil between Doria and President Jair Bolsonaro, likely opponents in presidential elections in 2022.
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