China's drug authorities have given "conditional" approval for a second COVID-19 vaccine, Sinovac's CoronaVac jab, the pharmaceutical company said Saturday.
The vaccine has already been rolled out to key groups at higher risk of exposure to coronavirus but Saturday's approval allows for its use on the general public.
A conditional approval helps hustle emergency drugs to market in cases when clinical trials are yet to meet normal standards but indicate therapies will work.
The approval comes after multiple domestic and overseas trials of the vaccine in countries including Brazil and Turkey, although "efficacy and safety results need to be further confirmed", Sinovac said in a statement.
Fellow Chinese pharmaceutical company Sinopharm received a similar conditional green light in December to put its vaccine on the market.
Sinovac said trials in Brazil had shown around 50 per cent efficacy in preventing infection and 80 per cent efficacy in preventing cases requiring medical intervention.
Meanwhile Sinopharm said in December that its vaccine had a 79.34 per cent efficacy rate, lower than rival jabs developed in the West by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna -- with 95 and 94 percent rates respectively.
China has been racing to develop homegrown jabs and aims to vaccinate 50 million people before the start of the Lunar New Year in mid-February.
The holiday normally spurs a travel rush with hundreds of millions traversing the country -- though authorities are encouraging people to stay home this year through a mixture of restrictions and incentives.
