Leading COVID-19 vaccine developer Sinopharm has submitted a market approval application to China's top market regulator, Xinhua News Agency quoted the company's deputy general manager Shi Shengyi as saying on Wednesday.

The Chinese company has two experimental COVID-19 vaccines — both of the inactivated type — undergoing third-stage clinical trials overseas. The Xinhua report did not reveal details about the application.

Liu Jingzhen, chairman of Sinopharm, said previously hundreds of thousands of people in China have been injected with either one of the vaccines through emergency authorization, and 56,000 of them had traveled abroad after inoculation.

No severe adverse effects have been observed among them and none of those now living overseas have been infected with the virus, he said.

In terms of the third-phase human trial overseas, Liu said nearly 60,000 volunteers from 10 countries have been enrolled in the program and preliminary results are satisfactory, and the company's production capability is expected to exceed 1 billion doses by the end of next year.

China now has five COVID-19 vaccines in third-phase clinical trials in foreign countries, making it a front-runner in the global race to create an effective and safe vaccine.