Rabat – China has announced it will use the Sinopharm vaccine for its own national vaccination campaign. Sinopharm on Wednesday reported that the vaccine is 79% effective, exceeding the required efficacy set by the WHO. China will aim to vaccinate 60-70% of its population, which could mean up to a billion Chinese citizens will receive the vaccine.
China’s main problem in testing the vaccine had been its own success in eradicating the virus through strong government measures. With less than a few dozen new cases reported each day, Chinese vaccine laboratories found a variety of foreign partners where their clinical trials could proceed.
Morocco was one of the countries that helped test China’s vaccine. Clinical trials in Morocco involved 600 Moroccans who participated in the important phases that determine the vaccine’s safety. The results of the trials were “very positive,” according to Morocco’s Minister of Health Khalid Ait Taleb.
China has become a leader in the global fight against COVID-19. Its own government measures showed the importance of lockdowns and mask wearing. China’s 1.4 billion population has contracted less than a few dozen new cases everyday while advanced economies in the West have struggled with tens of thousands of new cases everyday.
Despite CHina’s success in bringing down local cases, it will still proceed with a large-scale national vaccination campaign. Initially, China’s role as a major manufacturing nation globally helped spread the COVID-19 virus. Now, however, China runs the risk of seeing the virus return from abroad as international business and travel slowly return.
China’s decision to distribute its vaccine to hundreds of millions of Chinese citizens in spite of not having a significant outbreak nationally expresses confidence in the safety and efficacy of its vaccine. More than a million people have already received the Sinopharm vaccine, making it arguably one of the most widely used vaccines currently available.
For Morocco, China’s announcement again confirms confidence in its chosen vaccine candidate. While Morocco will also use other vaccine candidates, China’s decision comes as a morale boost for Moroccan authorities’ campaign to get Moroccans to trust the country’s vaccine candidate.
