China's Sinopharm vaccine gets conditional approval in Malaysia

KUALA LUMPUR - Malaysia has conditionally approved emergency use of the COVID-19 vaccine developed by China's Sinopharm, the Health Ministry said Friday.

The jab produced by the Beijing Bio-Institute of Biological Products Co. Ltd., a subsidiary of the China National Biotec Group, is an inactivated vaccine with easy storage requirements, which makes it highly suitable for use in low-resource settings.

The approval is the latest for the use of Chinese-developed vaccines in the country with Malaysia granting emergency use for the single-dose COVID-19 vaccine developed by Chinese company CanSino Biologics in June.

Before the approval for the CanSino vaccine, both the finished vaccines imported from China and the locally fill-and-finish products developed by China's Sinovac have been used in Malaysia's national immunization program after receiving approval from the country's regulators.

Malaysia has been ramping up its vaccination drive which started in February, with a single-day record high of 460,158 doses administered on July 15. Some 13.1 million doses have been administered so far in Malaysia, and over 4 million have been fully vaccinated.