..
..
..
Sinovac’s Covid-19 shot highly effective against serious illness — Malaysia study
Liz Lee / Reuters
September 24, 2021 14:41 pm +08
KUALA LUMPUR (Sept 24): Sinovac’s Covid-19 vaccine is highly effective against serious illness, although rival shots from Pfizer/BioNTech and AstraZeneca showed better protection rates, a large real world study from Malaysia showed.
The latest data is a boost to the Chinese firm, whose Covid-19 vaccine has been under growing scrutiny over its effectiveness following reports of infections among healthcare workers fully immunized with the Sinovac shot in Indonesia and Thailand.
The study, conducted by the Malaysian government, found that 0.011% of about 7.2 million recipients of the Sinovac shot required treatment in intensive care units (ICUs) for Covid-19 infections, health officials told reporters on Thursday.
By contrast, 0.002% of about 6.5 million recipients of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine needed ICU treatment for Covid-19 infections, while 0.001% of 744,958 recipients of the AstraZeneca shot required similar treatment.
.
There were differences in the demographics of the recipients of the three vaccines and it could have resulted in the different results, Kalaiarasu said.
Many of AstraZeneca recipients were in the “mid-adulthood age”, while the Pfizer and Sinovac shots were “very much for the vulnerable population”, he said.
AstraZeneca recipients also accounted for a much smaller proportion of the study, which involved about 14.5 million fully vaccinated individuals and conducted for more than five months since April 1.
..
weehingthong 