Darshana Sanjeewa Balasuriya Courtesy The Daily Mirror

Sri Lanka will re­ceive 600,000 doses of China’s Sinopharm vac­ci­na­tions on March 31 and pri­or­ity will be given for Sri Lankan cit­i­zens when ad­min­is­ter­ing the vac­cines while only 1 per­cent of the to­tal amount to be de­liv­ered will be for Chi­nese na­tion­als re­sid­ing here, an of­fi­cial from the Chi­nese Em­bassy in Sri Lanka said.

The Em­bassy of­fi­cial told the Daily Mir­ror that the vac­cines were a do­na­tion to the Sri Lankan govern­ment from China and it was the Sri Lankan govern­ment who of­fered the vac­cines to the Chi­nese na­tion­als re­sid­ing in the coun­try.

China’s Sinopharm vac­cine is pro­duced by the China Na­tional Biotec Group (CNBG) – a sub­sidiary of China Na­tional Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal Group Cor­po­ra­tion. Clin­i­cal tri­als run by the Sinopharm showed that it had an ef­fi­cacy rate of 79 per­cent.

How­ever the Sinopharm has run into con­tro­versy in the coun­try af­ter State Min­is­ter of Pro­duc­tion, Sup­ply and Reg­u­la­tion of Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals Prof. Channa Jaya­sumana said re­cently that it had re­ceived ap­proval for emer­gency use by the NMRA.

How­ever this ap­proval is yet to be of­fi­cially con­veyed to the State Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal Cor­po­ra­tion who is the main in­sti­tu­tion plac­ing or­ders with coun­tries to pur­chase the vac­cines.