Iran Press/ Asia: Developers are speeding up final testing, the Chinese foreign minister said during a UN meeting last week, as Britain approved the emergency use of Pfizer Inc.’s vaccine candidate and providers scrambled to set up distribution.
Even without final approval, more than 1 million health care workers and others in China who are deemed at high risk of infection have received experimental vaccines under emergency use permission. Developers have yet to disclose how effective their vaccines are and possible side effects.
China’s fledgling pharmaceutical industry has at least five vaccines from four producers being tested in more than a dozen countries, including Russia, Egypt, and Mexico, China daily Globe and Time reported.
Health experts say even if they are successful, the certification process for the United States, Europe, Japan, and other developed countries might be too complex for them to be used there. However, China said it would ensure the products are affordable for developing countries and has been actively pursuing deals across the world.
On Sunday, 1.2 million doses of the Chinese company Sinovac’s vaccine arrived in Indonesia, the government said.
Within China, so far, only one developer, China National Pharmaceutical Group, known as Sinopharm, said in November it applied for final market approval for the use of its vaccine.
Others have been approved for emergency use on people deemed at high risk of infection.
The government has yet to say how many people it plans to vaccinate. It said that plans call for vaccinating border personnel and other high-risk populations this month.
The companies are using more traditional techniques than Western developers.
They say unlike Pfizer’s vaccine, which must be kept frozen at temperatures as low as minus 70 degrees Celsius (minus 94 Fahrenheit), theirs can be stored at 2 to 8 C (36 to 46 F). The Chinese producers have yet to say how they might be distributed.
Health experts question why China uses experimental vaccines on such a vast scale now that the outbreak is largely under control within its borders.
Health officials previously said China would be able to manufacture 610 million doses by the end of this year and ramp-up to 1 billion doses next year.
In September, Sinovac’s CEO said about 3,000 of its employees had taken their vaccine. He said the company provided tens of thousands of doses to the Beijing city government.
Sinopharm has clinical trials underway in 10 countries, including the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Jordan, Peru, and Argentina, with nearly 60,000 volunteers. It has built two facilities in China, capable of producing 200 million doses per year.
Sinovac has trials in Brazil, Turkey, and Indonesia. Its most recent publicized data, a study in the science journal The Lancet, showed its candidate produced lower levels of antibodies in people than those who had recovered from COVID-19.
The company projects it will be able to produce a few hundred million doses of the vaccine by February or March of next year.
Another producer, CanSino, is testing in Russia, Pakistan, and Mexico and pursuing partnerships in Latin American countries. Its vaccine, which has been used on an emergency basis with the Chinese military, uses a harmless adenovirus to carry genes into human cells to generate an immune response.
A fourth company, Anhui Zhifei Longcom Biologic Pharmacy Co., is conducting final stage trials across China.
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