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Pakistan approves Chinese CanSinobio Covid vaccine for emergency use: Health minister

Islamabad - Health Minister confirms to Reuters on Friday.

Pakistan has approved China's CanSino Biologics (CanSinoBIO) Covid-19 vaccine for emergency use, Health Minister Faisal Sultan said on Friday.

"Yes, Correct," Sultan texted Reuters after being asked to confirm that the country's Drug Regulation Authority had met and approved the vaccine.

CanSinoBIO becomes the fourth candidate to get the Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) in the South Asian nation of 220 million people.

China's Sinopharm vaccine, AstraZeneca's vaccine developed with Oxford University and Russia's Sputnik V have already been approved.

The emergency use authorisation is given for a limited period of a few weeks to subject a vaccine candidate to a review for safety, efficacy and security.

CanSinoBIO last week released interim efficacy results from a multi-country trial, which included Pakistan, showing 65.7 per cent efficacy in preventing symptomatic coronavirus cases and a 90.98 per cent success rate in stopping severe infections.

In the Pakistani subset, efficacy of the CanSinoBIO vaccine at preventing symptomatic cases was 74.8 per cent and 100 per cent at preventing severe disease.

The efficacy of the shot was based on analysis of 30,000 participants and 101 confirmed cases of Covid-19, the health minister said last week, adding that no serious safety concerns had been raised in the study.