The health products regulator will soon announce its decision on the Chinese Covid-19 vaccine Sinovac.
Briefing the media on Thursday, the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority (Sahpra) which is currently assessing the efficacy of three Covid-19 vaccines, revealed that the assessment of Sinovac is now "quite advanced".
CEO Dr Boitumelo Semete-Makokotlela said they were already assessing the Russian vaccine SpuknikV, Sinovac and Sinopharm.
"When it comes to Sinovac we are at quite an advanced stage of the evaluation, we've had numerous engagements with the applicant... there should be a decision communicated to the applicant in the next coming days," Semete-Makokotlela said.
The regulatory body has so far authorised three Covid-19 vaccines for use in SA, namely AstraZeneca, Pfizer and Johnson and Johnson (J&J).
The authority recently saw protests by the EFF which is pushing for the Russian SputnikV and Chinese vaccines to be approved for use in SA.
Semete-Makokotlela said their approval processes are rigorous and are always informed by science.
"With Sputnik, we continue to work with them, they have applied for what we call the emergency use application as well as the rolling review application where they make data available as they receive it," she said.
Semete-Makokotlela said they have had "back and forth" engagements with the SputnikV applicants recently.
"The expectation is that we can start to progress a lot quicker now because there's a lot of data that they have recently submitted to us," she said.
Although the regulator declined to give intimate details on what was missing with the application from SputnikV, it however confirmed that "not all of the required data was submitted" initially.
However, in the last week data has been received which is being reviewed by the regulator.
Semete-Makokotlela said under normal circumstances it takes about 20 months to approve a vaccine but due to the fact that we are in a pandemic they have decided to work on weekends and public holidays to reduce the period to about three months.
In February, Sahpra announced that it was starting with evaluating data provided for safety, quality and efficacy received from the SputnikV vaccine.
Sahpra board chairperson Prof Helen Rees said there are currently about "200 Covid-19 vaccines in the pipeline circulating globally".
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