Nepal government on Wednesday granted emergency use approval to a Covid-19 vaccine developed by the Beijing Institute of Biological Products Co Ltd. (BIBP) in China under Sinopharm.
Nepal has already granted approval for AstraZeneca’s Covishield vaccine on January 15.
Department of Drug Administration of Nepal on Wednesday decided to issue conditional permission for emergency use authorization to the vaccine, according to the administration press statement.
By providing the emergency use authorization, the department paves the way to bring Shinopharm’s vaccine to Nepal. China has decided to provide 500,000 doses of the BBIBP-CorV vaccine, developed by Sinopharm, under grant assistance.
However, Nepal has received one million doses of the Covid vaccine from India on the third week of January while decided to procure another two million vaccines from the Serum Institute of India at a subsidy rate.
Sinopharm had applied for emergency use authorization for its vaccine on January 13 with the department.
Of the three applications—two from India and one from China’s Shinopharm—the department on January 15 had given emergency use authorization to only Covishield vaccine developed by the University of Oxford and pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca, which is produced in India by the Serum Institute of India. The department had demanded necessary documents with Sinopharm and Bharat Biotech.
On 30 December 2020, Sinopharm announced the vaccine’s efficacy was 79.34 percent, which was lower than the 86 percent announced by the United Arab Emirates on December 9. The UAE had based its results on an interim analysis of Phase III trials conducted in July.
