Brazil official: China vaccine 'capable of preventing disease, death'

Chinese and Brazilian experts cautioned against misinterpretation of the 50.4 percent efficacy rating from the Brazilian trial of CoronaVac, a COVID-19 vaccine candidate made by China's Sinovac Biotech. They said the figure only describes the protection rate under the most stringent conditions, many of which were not included in similar studies done by other vaccine developers.

Natalia Pasternak, president of Brazil's Science Question Institute, a nonprofit organization that promotes scientific literacy, said CoronaVac may not be the perfect vaccine against COVID-19, but it is a vaccine that is compatible with Brazil's local production, cold chain logistics and distribution networks.

"We have a vaccine that is perfectly capable of preventing disease and death," she said, adding that the CoronaVac's relatively low efficacy rate under difficult conditions should not be used to justify not using this vaccine.