China-made Covid-19 vaccine could be out by year-end

A Covid-19 vaccine under development in China could be in the market by the end of the year, a government body affiliated to the country’s cabinet, the State Council, has announced.

The vaccine is being jointly developed by the Wuhan Biological Products Research Institute and Beijing Biological Products Research Institute and have completed two phases of clinical or human trials, the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) announced in a social media post on its WeChat account.

Both entities are affiliated with government-owned pharmaceutical group Sinopharm.

More than 2000 people have received the vaccine in the first two phases of the trial.

“It is reported that the clinical trial is divided into three phases, the completion of phase I-III clinical till come into the market, it is expected to be the end of this year or early next year at the earliest,” the announcement said.

The announcement added that data from the two first two phases of clinical trials show that the candidate vaccine’s safety and efficacy were better than other vaccines under development.

More than 100 vaccines for the virus are being developed globally, and in China, a total of five vaccines are being developed and tested on humans.

Meanwhile, Wuhan is set to complete the ambitious task of conducting nucleic acid tests (NAT) on all its residents to check for asymptomatic patients.

Between May 15 and 25, Wuhan medics tested more than 6.5 million residents, a state media report said, adding at least 218 among them were found to be asymptomatic.

The mass testing is part of China’s efforts to fortify against a potential “second wave” after a cluster of cases emerged in a residential community earlier this month.

To carry out the tests in time, health workers collected and mixed 10 to 20 samples and carried out a single test on them; If the collected sample was positive, each individual was tested again to identify which person was positive.