Livzon’s protein-based vaccine, adopting a different technology than Sinovac and Sinopharm’s products, were among the two products Chinese officials said have recently been cleared for use. The other one has not been formally identified.
The regimen of one Livzon booster after two doses of inactivated vaccines had an efficacy of 61.35 per cent, Livzon said in February, citing preliminary data from a trial involving more than 10,000 participants and 110 cases, without providing details.
The combination had an efficacy of 60.81 per cent against Omicron, based on calculations involving 63 cases infected with the variant, a Livzon executive said on Friday, without specifying the severity of those cases, or which subvariants of Omicron the participants had contracted.
The company is working on bivalent or multivalent vaccine candidates, which include designs targeting the BA.5 subvariant of Omicron, after animal test data showed a candidate updated for BA.5 solely did not elicit broad neutralisation across variants, Yang Jiaming, deputy general manager at Livzon’s vaccine unit, told an event.
China currently only allows one booster dose following primary vaccination. It has yet to approve any foreign-made doses.