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.

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.