Question: My friends in Serbia are waiting to hear which vaccines the EU is going to accept as “valid” because they want to travel to Spain in the summer and they don’t want to take a vaccine that the EU says is not good enough, so yesterday’s info about the Russia vaccine is super helpful. Any chance you could provide more details about China’s vaccines too?

Answer: Good information about the various vaccines originating from China are a bit difficult to come by– no phase 3 clinical trial data have been published in peer reviewed literature, and the reports out of various countries on vaccine efficacy differ widely (for example, see here, here, and here).  According to the COVID-19 Vaccine Tracker, there are currently five COVID vaccines that have received emergency use approval in China and several other countries (Table 1).  Sinopharm-Beijing and Sinovac are the most widely approved of the five vaccines.  A couple of weeks ago, The BMJ published an informative read on the state of play, What do we know about China’s covid-19 vaccines?   I highly recommend the short and easy read!  

Table 1. Overview of Five Vaccines Approved in China