FILE PHOTO: A nurse holds a vial of China’s Sinopharm coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccine at a health center in Caracas, Venezuela March 7, 2021. REUTERS/Leonardo Fernandez Viloria/File Photo
GENEVA — The World Health Organization (WHO) announced on Friday it had approved a COVID-19 vaccine from China’s state-owned drugmaker Sinopharm for emergency use.
The vaccine, one of two main Chinese shots that collectively have already been given to hundreds of millions of people in China and abroad, becomes the first COVID-19 shot developed by a non-Western country to win the WHO’s backing.
It is also the first time the WHO has given emergency use approval to any Chinese vaccine for any infectious disease.
A WHO emergency listing is a signal to national regulators on a product’s safety and efficacy and would allow the shot to be included in COVAX, the global program to provide vaccines mainly for poor countries.
The WHO has previously given emergency approval to COVID-19 vaccines developed by Pfizer-BioNTech, AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, and, last week, Moderna.