China has approved for conditional use its first coronavirus vaccine, developed by state-owned pharmaceutical company Sinopharm.

The approval, announced by the Joint Prevention and Control Mechanism of the State Council, has come a day after Sinopharm said its vaccine was found to be 79.3-per-cent effective in preliminary data from the final round of testing.

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China aims to vaccinate at least 50 million people before the start of the Lunar New Year holiday, in mid-February, in order to prevent the disease from spreading as hundreds of millions of people are expected to travel home for the holidays.

DPA

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