A study conducted in Indonesia shows that the Chinese Covid-19 vaccine CoronaVac (Sinovac Biotech Ltd.) is 98% effective in protection against death, 96% against hospitalization, and 94% against symptomatic infections. The study involved 128,290 health workers from the capital, Jakarta, who participated between January and March 2021. The average age of the participants was 31 y.o.
These results are encouraging for dozens of developing countries relying on the controversial Chinese vaccine that has shown far worse results in clinical trials than Western vaccines, Bloomberg reports.
“We observe a very, very sharp decline in hospital admissions and deaths among health workers”, Indonesia’s health minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin said. Researchers are not sure which strain of coronavirus the Sinovac vaccine worked against in Indonesia, but the country has not identified any major outbreaks caused by the various strains of coronavirus.
It should be recalled that the results of the largest Phase III clinical trial in Brazil showed the CoronaVac effectiveness just above 50%, which is the lowest value among all first-generation Covid-19 vaccines.
As Yin Weidong, Executive Director of Sinovac Biotech Ltd. said there is inconsistency in clinical data on vaccination, while there is more evidence that CoronaVac performs better in the real world.
As reported on the website of the Ukrainian Ministry of Health, the country has already received 1.2 million doses of the Chinese CoronaVac. A total of 1.9 million doses will be received under the contract.
Eduard Yefimenko