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(Adds details, comment from WHO official)
ZURICH, April 15 (Reuters) - The World Health Organization
will decide late this month or in May on emergency use listings
for COVID-19 vaccines from Sinopharm and Sinovac
following an extended review, a WHO European region
official said on Thursday.
"We are in touch with them to review the dossiers that have
been submitted by both vaccine manufacturers," WHO-Europe
vaccination expert Siddhartha Datta told a virtual press
conference. "We will be hearing about a decision on the
emergency use listing in April or early May, so please keep an
eye on that."
A WHO panel in final stages of review of the Chinese
vaccines has said that a decision for at least one could come on
April 26, while a second meeting has been planned for May 3,
should more time be needed to make a decision on both shots.
Such an emergency WHO listing is a prerequisite for purchase
by the COVAX vaccine-sharing facility designed to get shots to
poorer countries. It also helps guide countries with less
developed regulatory systems about a vaccine's safety and
efficacy.
So far, the WHO has issued emergency listings for Pfizer
and BioNTech's COVID-19 vaccine, as well as
versions of AstraZeneca's vaccine made by the Serum
Institute of India and South Korea's AstraZeneca-SKBio.
CanSino's vaccine relies on a viral vector to deliver DNA to
prompt an immune response, a technique similar to that used in
both AstraZeneca's and Johnson & Johnson's vaccines now
being investigated for their association with very rare blood
clots combined with low platelet counts.
CanSino has said there have been no reports of blood clots.
Sinovac's vaccine, being used in places including Hong Kong
and Brazil, relies on inactivated coronaviruses to generate an
immune response, a technique used for decades including against
polio.
(Reporting by John Miller; Editing by Hugh Lawson and Barbara
Lewis)
