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BEIJING (Reuters) – Nearly one million people have taken an experimental coronavirus vaccine developed by China’s National Pharmaceutical Group (Sinopharm) through the country’s emergency use program, the firm said late Wednesday.
China launched the emergency use program in July, which so far includes three candidate vaccines for essential workers and other limited groups of people, even as clinical studies have yet to be completed to demonstrate their safety and efficacy.
No serious adverse reactions have been reported from those who received the vaccine in emergency use, Sinopharm said in an article on social media WeChat, quoting President Liu Jingzhen from a recent media interview.
Two vaccine candidates developed by the Sinopharm China National Biotec Group (CNBG) subsidiary and a third developed by Sinovac Biotech СВА.О have been used for the emergency program.
It is not clear which vaccine Liu was referring to, and Sinopharm was not immediately available for comment.
Sinopharm’s vaccines, which use inactivated viruses that cannot replicate in human cells to trigger immune responses, require two doses, clinical trial registration data showed.
The experimental vaccines are undergoing Phase 3 clinical trials abroad that have recruited nearly 60,000 people, and blood samples were taken from more than 40,000 participants 14 days after they took the second dose, the article said, citing Liu. , without breaking down the numbers for each one. vaccine.
Among the construction project employees, diplomats and students who went abroad after receiving the Sinopharm vaccine, no one has been infected, he added.
But experts have cautioned against using data solely from the emergency use program, without comparable results from a standard clinical trial control group, to determine the effectiveness of a vaccine.
Reporting by Roxanne Liu and Tony Munroe; Edited by Himani Sarkar
