China approved its first homegrown mRNA vaccine for COVID-19, adding a key tool to combat future outbreaks of the virus that was missing due to Beijing’s reluctance to allow Western-made shots using the gene-based technology, reports The Wall Street Journal.
CSPC Pharmaceutical Group’s messenger-RNA vaccine, known as SYS6006, was given emergency-use clearance by regulators, the company said in a filing to the Hong Kong stock exchange Wednesday. The vaccine was designed to work against the latest variants of COVID-19, and also proved effective against older strains, it said.
China has relied on older technology, primarily so-called inactivated vaccines, to protect its population during the pandemic, as well as exporting billions of shots—many to poorer countries. But as the virus mutated, China’s vaccines proved less effective against the highly transmissible Omicron variants than did the mRNA ones produced by the West.