A domestic vaccine may still see the light of day.
Tuoi Tre reports that the National Ethics Committee in Biomedical Research, under the Ministry of Health, met last week to assess Nano Covax, Vietnam's most advanced domestic COVID-19 vaccine candidate.
This was the third such meeting, and the committee's researchers found that the vaccine is 52.1% effective in preventing symptomatic COVID-19, thus meeting standards set by both the World Health Organization and the US Food and Drug Administration.
More specifically, it provides 92% protection against severe symptoms, and 100% protection against death from the novel coronavirus — the two most crucial benchmarks for a vaccine.
The news source adds that 11 of 15 members of the ethics committee voted in favor of this assessment; two more voted yes while asking for more data; and the final two did not vote.
These findings have been passed on to the health ministry's council on licensing of drugs and medicinal ingredients, which is expected to meet in the near future to decide whether to approve Nano Covax for public use.
The vaccine has been under development by Saigon-based Nanogen Pharmaceutical Biotechnology JSC since 2020, and entered human trials on December 17 of that year. Over 14,000 volunteers have participated in three trial phases thus far.
It is not clear whether Nano Covax's efficacy against the Omicron variant has been tested yet. No domestic cases of the variant have been reported in Vietnam as of this writing.
Meanwhile, Reuters reports that the government aims to provide a vaccine booster shot to all adults by the end of March. Currently, 69.3 million people have been fully vaccinated, or 71.8% of the population.
[Photo via Suc Khoe & Doi Song]
