COVID-19 News: Sinovac Found Less Effective Then Pfizer Vaccine Based on New Study

There are several vaccines against the novel coronavirus that are being rolled out around the world today. Among them is Sinovac's CoronaVac.

However, the CoronaVac is only 66% effective compared to Pfizer's 92.6% efficacy rate in preventing COVID-19 based on new research.

Research Data Shows

The study was conducted in Chile as Sinovac Biotech Ltd. was pitted against Pfizer Inc.

The results in the country show that Sinovac is less effective in countering the coronavirus disease compared to Pfizer. The data shows that the former only had a 66% effectiveness as compared to the latter's 93%, which is a significant lead.

More than 10 million citizens were given the inactivated inoculation in the country.

However, fully vaccinated individuals were still being hospitalized or ended up dying after receiving the two doses. Pfizer's mRNA vaccine was administered to less than half a million people. The results were published in the New England Journal of Medicine on Wednesday, July 6.

The research involved the months of February up until May, just as the alpha and gamma strains of the virus showed up, deeply concering Chile's government.

The preliminary results seen in April identified that CoronaVac was only 67% effective in preventing fully vaccinated individuals to show symptoms of COVID-19, and prevented 80% of fatalities.

Sinovac Still Used by Many

There are still a lot of countries that rely on CoronaVac to counter COVID-19.

As reported by CNBC, six countries have a high inoculation rate. However, five of those countries have high infection rates, and they are using CoronaVac as part of their inoculation campaign.

Countries like Mongolia have reported that in May, they received 2.3 million doses of Sinopharm vaccines. A very large difference in comparison to Pfizer only sending out 255,000 doses. Russia's Sputnik V only consisted of 80,000 doses.

The UAE and Seychelles heavily depended on the Sinopharm vaccine in the beginning but have since then welcomed other vaccines. Sinovac is still one of the most-used jabs to prevent COVID-19 alongside Pfizer-BioNTech's mRNA vaccine.

Still The Best Option for Most

Despite the stats from the study, experts agree that countries should not stop using COVID-19 vaccines that come from China, most especially while the supply of the vaccines is limited to the low and middle-income nations.

Sinovac has been present in most developing nations and still provides resilience to COVID-19.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has approved vaccines coming from Sinovac and Sinopharm to be used for emergencies. Sinopharm vaccines have an efficacy rate of 79%, but for people aged 60 and older, its effectiveness isn't clear. Sinovac has a rate of 50% to 80%, depending on the countries where trials were held.

Both Sinopharm and Sinovac vaccines expose the body to an "inactivated" virus, which then triggers an immune response. The method has been done for vaccines for decades already.

However, Pfizer and Moderna vaccines do not rely on these methods. Instead, they have created a messenger RNA that tells the body to make the necessary viral proteins for the body to trigger an immune response.

This article is owned by Tech Times

Written by Alec G.