An institute in Wuhan under the China National Biotec Group (CNBG), a subsidiary of Sinopharm, has isolated the Delta variant and is accelerating development on Delta-specific shots, institute director told media in Wuhan. The new Delta variant cases discovered in Wuhan, where the first cases of COVID-19 were reported in late 2019, comes after about a year of virtually no cases in the city.
Duan Kai, director of the institute, told thepaoer.cn that with support from local authorities, they soon isolated the Delta variant after the city reported one confirmed case on August 2.
“We are accelerating research on the variant. We are making efforts to finish pre-clinical trial researches and apply for emergency use approval as soon as possible,” Duan said.
Duan revealed that, according to data from Phase III clinical trials on a COVID-19 vaccine developed by the institute, the vaccine shows an overall protection efficacy of 72.51 percent for all recipients and 100 percent efficacy against medium and critical diseases for all confirmed patients.
All recipients can produce high-titer antibodies, the director said.
Duan called on the public to get vaccinated as he believed that large-scale vaccination has helped Wuhan quickly put the latest outbreak under control.
But in the long run Duan said that a booster will be needed to enhance vaccines’ efficiency against more infectious mutations. He noted that the Wuhan institute is aiming to produce 80-100 million shots per month to meet demand.
The Wuhan institute has constructed lines that are designed for producing 1 billion shots per year, according to Duan.
He said that it requires 70-80 percent of the national population to build herd immunity against COVID-19. High vaccination rate of high-infection risk groups is especially important to protect those who could not get vaccinated, for example those who have serious chronic diseases or hypoimmunity.
According to the Chinese National Health Commission, more than 777 million people in China had completed vaccination as of Thursday.
Photo: Xinhua
