Covax signs agreement for 550 million Chinese vaccines despite doubts

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(CNN) -

Covax has signed agreements with two Chinese pharmaceutical companies to purchase more than 500 million of their covid-19 vaccines by the first half of next year, the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (Gavi) announced on Monday.

Under the agreements, Chinese vaccine manufacturers Sinopharm and Sinovac will make 110 million doses available immediately, according to a press release from Gavi, a public-private global health partnership that leads Covax, a global initiative aimed at distributing vaccines to countries regardless of their wealth.

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The agreements come at a time when "the delta variant represents an increasing risk to health systems," Gavi said in the statement.

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Gavi has the option to purchase a total of 170 vaccines from Sinopharm and 380 million vaccines from Sinovac, Gavi said.

China has already shipped millions of doses of vaccines around the world as part of President Xi Jinping's vision to make the country's vaccines a "global public good."

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As of June 30, Sinovac had delivered more than 1 billion doses worldwide, company president and CEO Weidong Yin said in a statement regarding the Covax deal.

"Our mission at Sinovac is to supply vaccines in an effort to eliminate human disease," he said.

The new agreements were welcomed by Gavi CEO Dr. Seth Berkley, who said the vaccines were an example of the association's strategy to ensure there were "options in the face of constraints such as supply delays."

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Covax's launch was delayed earlier this year, after a coronavirus crisis in India prevented the country's largest vaccine maker from being able to deliver millions of doses on time.

Monday's announcement comes as Chinese vaccines face increasing scrutiny over their efficacy, particularly against the fast-spreading delta variant.

Thai authorities announced on Monday that healthcare workers would receive a booster injection from AstraZeneca or Pfizer, after 618 of more than 677,000 medical staff who received two doses of Sinovac tested positive for COVID-19.

Of the 618 who tested positive, only two became seriously ill, including a nurse who died.

"Despite that, all vaccines have been shown to be efficient in preventing hospitalization and death," Foreign Ministry official Pensom Lertsithichai said in a briefing on Monday.

He added that medical workers had high exposure to COVID-19, which could have contributed to "vaccination failure."

Singapore authorities said last week they would exclude Sinovac doses from the city-state's total vaccine count due to inadequate efficacy data, especially against the delta variant, Reuters reported.

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Both the Sinopharm and Sinovac vaccines have been validated by the World Health Organization (WHO) for emergency use.

So far, trials show that the Sinopharm and Sinovac vaccines are less effective against COVID-19 than their mRNA counterparts.

In Brazilian trials, Sinovac was approximately 50% effective against symptomatic COVID-19 and 100% effective against severe disease, according to trial data submitted to WHO.

The efficacy of Sinopharm for both symptomatic disease and hospitalization was estimated at 79%, according to the WHO.

The Pfizer / BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, which have also signed agreements with Covax, are more than 90% effective against symptomatic COVID-19.

Covax has legally binding contracts with manufacturers for around 3.8 billion doses, with 1.9 billion of them expected to be available for supply by the end of the year, according to Covax's most recent global supply forecast.

According to UNICEF's vaccine supply panel, 107.5 million doses have been shipped through Covax to 135 countries.

CNN's Yong Xiong contributed reporting.

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