WHO's emergency listing of Chinese vaccine to bolster global inoculation: Bangladeshi expert

The decision by the World Health Organization (WHO) to list China's Sinopharm vaccine for emergency use will bolster the inoculation drive against the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic worldwide, a Bangladeshi health expert said on Saturday.

Bangladesh is very pleased to learn about the WHO decision to include the Chinese-made vaccine in the Emergency Use Listing (EUL), which surely comes as a big blessing for the whole world in the fight against the deadly disease, said Mushtuq Hossain, an adviser to the Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research under Bangladesh's Health Ministry, in an interview with Xinhua.

Bangladesh's drug regulator has already approved the Sinopharm vaccine, one of two main Chinese vaccines that have already been applied to hundreds of millions of people in China and worldwide, for emergency use in the country, he said.

"Our government has already signed an agreement with Chinese counterparts to import this vaccine," the Bangladeshi health expert said.

This decision of the WHO will further facilitate the vaccination of more Bangladeshis, he added.

Speaking of the conference with South Asian foreign ministers that China hosted recently, he said that this was a good initiative of the Chinese government.

"International cooperation is a must for fighting a global pandemic, like COVID-19," he said, noting that a WHO emergency use listing will help China extend more support to the countries in need.

The EUL is reportedly a signal to national regulators on a product's safety and efficacy, and would allow the shot to be included in COVAX, a global coalition that works to ensure fair and equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines around the world.

The WHO has previously given emergency approval to COVID-19 vaccines developed by Pfizer-BioNTech, AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, and Moderna.

Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina inaugurated the country's COVID-19 vaccination drive on Jan. 28 to rein in the pandemic that has so far spread across Bangladesh.

Amid uncertainty over the timely arrival of the next COVID-19 vaccine shipment from India, the Bangladeshi government later halted administering first doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine across the country.