5 questions about the Sinovac Covid-19 vaccine answered

[superadmin]

SINGAPORE - The Sinovac Covid-19 vaccine will be included in the national vaccination programme to cater to individuals aged 18 years and above who are unable or unwilling to take the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna mRNA vaccines.

The Ministry of Health said that three doses of the Sinovac vaccine will be required for a person to be considered fully vaccinated.

The second dose should be taken 28 days after the first dose, while the third dose should be taken 90 days after the second dose.

The Health Sciences Authority's (HSA) said it conducted a careful and thorough review taking into account the public health needs in Singapore of having non-mRNA vaccines as an option for individuals who are medically unsuitable to receive mRNA vaccines.

Here are some frequently asked questions on the Sinovac vaccine.

Q: What is the efficacy of Sinovac?
A: Vaccine efficacy is the degree to which a vaccine prevents a disease under controlled conditions in a clinical trial.

A study conducted in Brazil demonstrated vaccine efficacy of 51 per cent against non-Delta variants, which meets the threshold of 50 per cent set by the World Health Organisation (WHO) for Emergency Use Listing. This means that there is a 51 per cent reduction of symptomatic Covid-19 disease in a vaccinated group of people as compared with a similarly sized group of unvaccinated people.


The HSA's clinical review was based primarily on this data.

The authority also reviewed data from pre-clinical studies, clinical trials in human volunteers, manufacturing and quality controls, as well as supplemental data from a real-world effectiveness study in Chile.

The study in Chile involved more than 10 million participants aged 16 years and above.

As at May this year, Sinovac demonstrated vaccine effectiveness of 66 per cent against the Alpha and Gamma variants, according to the study.

The study also showed that Sinovac offered more than 86 per cent protection against other Covid-19 disease outcomes such as hospitalisation, admission to the intensive care unit and death.

There is a lack of data on the vaccine's protection against the Delta variant, as well as its effectiveness in immunocompromised patients and persons with co-morbidities such as diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and cancers.

- More -