China Sinopharm’s coronavirus vaccine taken by around one million people in emergency

BEIJING (Reuters) – Nearly one million people have taken an experimental coronavirus vaccine developed by China National Pharmaceutical Group (Sinopharm) as part of the country’s emergency use program, the company said on Wednesday.

China launched the emergency use program in July, which so far includes three vaccine candidates for essential workers and other limited groups of people even as clinical studies have yet to be completed to prove their safety and their effectiveness.

No serious adverse reactions were reported in those who received the vaccine in an emergency, Sinopharm said in a post on social media WeChat, citing Chairman Liu Jingzhen in a recent media interview.

Two candidate vaccines developed by the subsidiary of Sinopharm China National Biotec Group (CNBG) and a third developed by Sinovac Biotech were used for the emergency program.

It is not known which vaccine Liu was referring to and Sinopharm was not immediately available for comment.

Sinopharm’s vaccines, which use an inactivated virus unable to replicate in human cells to trigger immune responses, require two doses, clinical trial registration data showed.

The investigational vaccines are in Phase 3 overseas clinical trials that have enrolled nearly 60,000 people, and blood samples from more than 40,000 participants have been taken 14 days after taking the second dose, the ‘article quoting Liu, without breaking down the figures for each. vaccine.

Among the construction project workers, diplomats and students who went abroad after taking Sinopharm’s vaccine, no one was infected, he added.

But experts cautioned against using data only from the emergency use program, without comparable results from a standard clinical trial control group, to determine a vaccine’s effectiveness.