China’s drug regulator approved the country’s first coronavirus vaccine for general public use, a sign of confidence in the experimental traits the nation plans to develop inside and outside its borders.
The National Administration of Medical Products of China authorized a state-owned Covid-19 vaccine China National Biotec Group Co., a Sinopharm unit, officials told reporters in Beijing on Thursday.
With approval, the vaccine, authorized for emergency use in China since mid-year, along with other cutting-edge features, will be commercially available, meaning it can be administered to the general population. U.S. regulators in Singapore have approved firings over the past month, including vaccines developed by Pfizer Inc., Moderna Inc. and AstraZeneca Plc.
Zeng Yixin, deputy minister of the country’s National Health Commission, said China will target members of the population at higher risk for their inoculations, including the elderly and those with pre-existing conditions, and then launch the vaccines to the general public. the information session.
The country has already administered more than 4.5 million doses of Covid-19 vaccine, with only 3 million administered since mid-December, Zeng said. It is said to be with the aim of inoculating 50 million people against the virus in early February, before the annual lunar New Year holidays. The proportion of adverse reactions, including allergies, is about two per million, Zeng said Thursday.
Face the challenges
After the briefing, state media, including the People’s Daily, reported that the vaccine would be provided free of charge to Chinese citizens. Although Zeng raised the possibility that the shots were free, no specific details about the launch were provided.
“Vaccines are by their nature a public good and the price will vary according to the scale of use,” Zeng said in the briefing. “But the broader premise is that it will be offered for free to the entire population.”
The approval for wider use underscores China’s determination to be a major player in the supply of vaccines to its own people and countries around the world. Still, the nation faces challenges in gaining the trust of millions of people who may have to rely on their vaccines.
China is struggling to get the world to trust its vaccines
Chinese developers have been slow compared to their Western counterparts in publishing clinical trial data, raising questions about transparency, efficacy and safety as the world puts the laser focus on which vaccines will be most successful in fighting the pandemic. Pfizer and Moderna, which developed cutting-edge coronavirus vaccines that make use of messenger RNA technology, sent data to the FDA that is publicly available. D’AstraZeneca this month peer-reviewed results were published in The Lancet.
CNBG will publish detailed data on its features in recognized international medical journals, President Wu Yonglin said on Thursday.
“We can’t simply compare whether Chinese vaccines are better or foreign,” said Zheng Zhongwei, an official with the National Health Commission. “Only by thoroughly evaluating the safety, efficacy, accessibility, and affordability of each can we do a scientific review.”
Lack of confidence
Provisional conflicting data released by some of the companies have contributed to a lack of confidence in China’s vaccines. CNBG said Wednesday that its firing is effective in preventing Covid-19 in 79.3% of people, less than 86% previously reported in its trials in the UAE.
Rival national developer Meanwhile, Sinovac Biotech Ltd. it has not yet produced definitive results on the effectiveness of its vaccine, with trials conducted in Brazil and Turkey suggesting that the shot has a 90% protection rate on both sides. The company is still reconciling the results of independent Phase III trials conducted in Brazil, Turkey, Indonesia and Chile, a person familiar with the trials said last week.
Pfizer and Moderna shots have produced better results, reducing symptomatic cases of Covid-19 by more than 90% in giant trials. But Chinese vaccines have the advantage of being easier to store and distribute because they do not need to be frozen, as do mRNA traits, which facilitates distribution to rural areas and developing countries.
Geopolitical influence
Approval for general use is unlikely to make much of a difference within China itself, as the country has largely eliminated local transmission of the virus through strict local blockades and mass testing. But it could be a game changer for other countries facing uncontrollable outbreaks, such as Indonesia and Peru, which have offers for vaccines from China.
Vaccines could also help China gain geopolitical influence and restore an image tarnished by criticism of its initial response to the virus and its role as the original epicenter. President Xi Jinping has vowed to share any successful vaccine abroad and China has joined Covax, a program backed by the World Health Organization aimed at ensuring an equitable supply of working vaccines for both rich countries as for the poor.
China’s career for Covid-19 The vaccine raises safety questions
Chinese vaccines will be reasonably priced and reasonably priced as a public good for the world, and the country is considering various ways to distribute traits to developing nations, including donations, said Shen Bo, a foreign ministry official.
Beijing mobilized its regulators, research institutes and companies to introduce vaccines shortly after the new pathogen first emerged from the central Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019. This gave the vaccine candidates a good start and they were among the first in the world to start testing in humans.
Black market
But Western peers were quicker to provide data on fundamental Phase III trials. The near elimination of the pathogen in China caused delays for domestic developers, who had to do so. stir find test sites abroad where the pathogen is still spreading rapidly.
Despite the delays, more than one million Chinese were shot as part of the emergency use program, the definition of which was expanded to include front-line medical workers, state employees and students who needed to travel to the United States. ‘foreigner. Even government officials and corporate executives have had access to the shootings, raising fears that the black market was developing.
China now has 14 vaccines in clinical trials, five of them in the final phase of Phase III, Xu Nanping, deputy director of the Ministry of Science and Technology, said at Thursday’s briefing.
– With the assistance of John Liu, Claire Che, Kenneth Wong and Timothy Annett
(Updates with vaccine reports provided free of charge, starting with the sixth paragraph)