China has granted its first emergency use authorization to a homegrown mRNA COVID vaccine, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday. The vaccine, known as SYS6006, was developed by CSPC Pharmaceutical Group Ltd., according to a filing to the Hong Kong exchange by the company. It uses the same technology as the vaccines developed and used widely in the U.S. by Pfizer PFE and German partner BioNTech BNTX and Moderna MRNA. It was designed to target both newer variants of the virus that are dominant along with older ones. China has relied on older technology, so-called inactivated vaccines, to protect its population during the pandemic, but as the virus spread and mutated, China’s vaccines proved less effective against the highly transmissible omicron variants than did the mRNA ones produced by the West.
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