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BEIJING: Despite efforts to develop an effective vaccine against the deadly coronavirus, which has infected and claimed millions of lives worldwide, China is believed to have successfully conducted the first trial of the coronavirus vaccine COVID- 19 in animals.
China has reportedly developed a coronavirus vaccine, PiCoVacc, which has been shown to be very effective in monkeys. The vaccine, PiCoVacc, has been developed by Sinovac Biotech, based in Beijing.
The Sinovac Biotech researchers used a very typical method to prevent the virus from infecting life forms: placing a disabled virus in an animal’s body, forcing its immune system to produce antibodies. Antibodies will also kill normal viruses.
The researchers injected the vaccine into rhesus macaques, a species of monkey native to India, and then exposed the monkeys to the new coronavirus three weeks later.
A week later, the monkeys who took the largest doses of the vaccine did not have the virus in their lungs, which means the vaccine worked. Meanwhile, the monkeys that did not receive PiCoVacc contracted the virus and developed severe pneumonia.
The vaccine has been undergoing human testing in China since mid-April.
PiCoVacc is not the only COVID-19 vaccine that is hopeful in ending the pandemic that killed hundreds of thousands of people worldwide.
Another similar product made by a Chinese military institution is being tested on humans. Sinopharm’s product, using the same method as PiCoVacc, has entered the second phase of clinical trials.
However, researchers may have a difficult time recruiting for testing in the near future, as the number of known coronavirus patients remaining in China is only hundreds. The same situation halted the development of SARS vaccines in 2003.
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