CanSino Bio Photo:VCG

 
Chinese vaccine producer CanSino's recombinant COVID-19 vaccine Convidecia received emergency use approval in Mexico on Wednesday, the company announced. The vaccine will be given to adults over the age of 18 in the country.

CanSino signed a pre-purchase framework agreement with the Mexican Ministry of Health in October, 2020 to supply 35 million doses of the vaccine, according to a notice CanSino sent to the Global Times on Wednesday. As planned, the vaccine will be provided to the country from the end of 2020 to 2021.

The vaccine is effective with a single dose and can bring dual protection - humoral and cellular immunity - at the same time, according to the company. It is so far the only COVID-19 vaccine that is effective for a single dose and can be stored stably at 2-8 C for a long time.

It is also effective for the elderly, based on phase II and III trials which involved aged participants and saw no serious adverse reactions.

The vaccine is a recombinant adenovirus vector vaccine jointly developed by CanSino Biologics and researchers from the Institute of Military Medicine under the Academy of Military Sciences led by prominent Chinese coronavirus vaccine developer Chen Wei.

It reported 65.7 percent efficacy against symptomatic COVDI-19 cases, 90.98 percent against severe disease, according to its global Phase III interim data released on Monday. The trials were carried out among more than 40,000 volunteers, aged 18 and older, in 78 clinical trial sites across five countries in three continents.

The trial in Pakistan showed that after 28 days of single dose vaccination, the protection against severe infection was 100 percent, with an overall protection efficacy of 74.8 percent, and no serious vaccine-related adverse reactions occurred.

Experts told the Global Times that the good effective rate of the vaccine and single-dose vaccination indicates that a rapid, large-scale inoculation of the population can be achieved, which is of great significance to overall epidemic control.