Efficacy of Chinese CoronaVac vaccine in Chile national programme
1 August 2021. Related: COVID-19: vaccine research, COVID-19.
Simon Collins, HIV i-Base
Although the Chinese CoronaVac vaccine is already widely used in many middle- and low-income countries and is approved by the WHO, phase 3 results have not been published.
However the results of a prospective observational study of this vaccines in more than 10 million people in the Chile vaccine programme from February to May 2021 are reported in the NEJM.
Vaccine effectiveness in more than 4 million people who had received two doses included 65% at preventing symptomatic COVID-19, 87% at preventing hospitalisation and 86% at preventing deaths. Similar efficacy was reported for older people (>60 years), see Table 1.
The study didn’t include details of likely background prevalence of variants.
Table 1: Efficacy rates following two doses of CoronaVac in Chile
| Prevented event | Overall efficacy (95%CI) | Efficacy in >60 years |
| COVID-19 | 65.9% (65.2 to 66.6) | 66.6% (65.4 to 67.8) |
| Hospitalisation | 87.5% (6.7 to 88.2) | 85.3% (84.3 to 86.3) |
| ICU admission | 90.3% (89.1 to 91.4) | 89.2% (87.6 to 90.6) |
| Mortality | 86.3% (84.5 to 87.9) | 86.5% (84.6 to 88.1) |
References
Jara A et al. Effectiveness of an inactivated SARS-CoV-2 vaccine in Chile. NEJM. DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa2107715. (7 July 2021).
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2107715
This report was first published on 8 July 2021.