Issued vials of the Sinovac COVID-19 vaccine are seen as the Thai holiday island of Phuket rushes to vaccinate its population amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, and ahead of a strict July 1 outbreak. quarantine for foreign visitors to return tourism income in Phuket, Thailand, April 1, 2021. REUTERS / Jorge Silva
The Chinese Sinovac COVID-19 vaccine was 67% effective in preventing symptomatic infection, data from a massive real-world study in Chile shows, a potential boost to the shot under scrutiny for its level of protection against the virus.
The CoronaVac vaccine was 85% effective in preventing hospitalizations and 80% in preventing deaths, the Chilean government said in a report, adding that the data should turn out to be a “game changer” of the vaccine on a wider scale. .
Rodrigo Yanez, Chile’s deputy commerce minister who struck a deal with Sinovac to host the drug’s clinical trial and purchase 60 million doses of the drug over three years, said the results showed that Chile was “the right bet. had done.
“It’s a game changer for that vaccine, and I think it quite graphically reinforces the discussion about its effectiveness,” he told Reuters, adding that it should help with World Health Organization approvals as the first true study.
CoronaVac inventory in Chile is running low, with an agreed inventory of 14.2 million due to be fully shipped by the end of May. Yanez said he was negotiating an additional 4 million doses of the vaccine and that the country will switch to using more of the Pfizer-BioNTech (PFE.N), (22UAy.DE) doses it owes for now.
The release of the CoronaVac data makes Chile one of the few countries, including Great Britain and Israel, to use their rapid vaccination campaigns to understand how effective vaccines are outside of controlled clinical trials and when faced with unpredictable variables in societies.
Israel’s real-world study of the effectiveness of Pfizer’s vaccine looked at results among 1.2 million people, a mix of those who got the injection and those who didn’t.
The Chile study examined the effectiveness of CoronaVac among 10.5 million people, again looking at both those who had been vaccinated and those who had not. Vaccines were administered approximately 28 days apart.
The CoronaVac data published by Chile compares favorably with previous data released on its efficacy in clinical trials.
Brazilian studies have shown the drug’s overall efficacy in preventing symptomatic infection by just over 50%, although its efficacy in preventing hospitalization and against moderate and severe cases is much higher.
Indonesia approved the emergency vaccine based on interim data showing it to be 65% effective, while in a Turkish study it had 83.5% efficacy in preventing symptomatic infection and 100% in preventing serious illness and hospitalization.
The Chilean study looked at the impact of the vaccine on people in the public health system between February 2 and April 1, adjusted for age, gender, co-morbidity, income and nationality.
The authors emphasized that its results, for example, lower protection against death than in clinical trials, should be considered against the backdrop of a violent second wave of the pandemic.
It compared non-vaccinated individuals 14 days or more after receiving one dose and more than 14 days after receiving a second dose. The protection against the virus was much higher after the second shot.
Rafael Araos, the Chilean public health official who presented the study, said the report did not specifically look at how the vaccine was resistant to coronavirus variants, including the P1 mutant first identified in Brazil.
“The study was conducted during a period of high circulation of the virus, including its variants – so these results are positive if we don’t have variants and also if we do,” he said.
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