In an emergency situation, some Chinese medics would be injected with coronavirus vaccines, Gao Fu, director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said during a “welcome back” ceremony for a medic team from the Chinese CDC that supported Wuhan, Central China’s Hubei Province where the first infection case was reported in the country.
In accordance with how the epidemic develops, in case of emergency, some medical staff would be injected with a newly developed coronavirus vaccine, Gao said, noting that any medicines and vaccines have their own research and development cycles.
“I believe we could come up with vaccines with the joint efforts of everyone,” he said.
At present, recombinant novel coronavirus vaccine (adenoviral vector) has entered phase II testing in China, some inactivated vaccines have entered phase I testing and some inactivated vaccines are about to enter phase I, the director of the Chinese CDC was quoted as saying in media reports. There are also some other inactivated vaccines that will soon enter phase I.
Two inactivated vaccines for the coronavirus developed in China have got the green light from authorities to enter into clinical trials to have phase I tests following one developed by a research team led by a top Chinese military epidemiologist which entered phase II trials last week, Wu Yuanbin, director-general of science and technology for social development with the Ministry of Science and Technology, said at a press conference on April 14.
China’s vaccine research and development capacity have ranked among the top across the world. China especially leads the world in traditional productive technology and developing inactivated vaccines because it started research earlier in these areas, according to experts.
Concerning the timetable for vaccine research and development, the director of the Chinese CDC said, “if you follow the normal procedure, the vaccine may not come out until the end of this year or early next year,” noting that if the situation continues worsening, medics might be injected with the vaccines by the end of this year.
He also emphasized that this won’t be used among normal people, according to media reports.
Samples of the COVID-19 inactivated vaccine are seen at a vaccine production plant of China National Pharmaceutical Group (Sinopharm) in Beijing, capital of China, April 10, 2020.Photo:Xinhua
