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A researcher in a lab coat in Beijing has humanity’s hopes on his fingers: “Coronavac”, an experimental coronavirus vaccine that has overturned the world.
Sinovac Biotech, which is conducting one of four authorized clinical trials in China, has claimed great progress in its research and promising results among the monkeys.
While human trials have just begun, the company says it is ready to do 100 million doses per year to fight the virus, which emerged in central China late last year before spreading worldwide and killing to more than 220,000 people.
Thousands of injections of the vaccine, which is based on an inactivated pathogen, have already been produced and packaged in a white and orange case with the name “Coronavac”.
While the drug has a long way to go before it is approved, the company must demonstrate that it can produce it on a large scale and submit batches for control by the authorities.
The World Health Organization warned that the development of a vaccine could take 12 to 18 months, and Sinovac does not know when its half-milliliter injection will be ready for marketing.
“It’s the question everyone is asking,” Sinovac’s director of brand management, Liu Peicheng, told AFP.
Sinovac, which is listed on Nasdaq, has experience in the mass production of a drug against a global virus: it was the first pharmaceutical company to market a vaccine against the H1N1 flu, or swine flu, in 2009.
According to the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, more than 100 laboratories around the world are struggling to find a vaccine, but only seven, including Sinovac, are currently in clinical trials.
Sinovac has published results showing that its vaccine has “greatly protected” macaques from infection in an animal trial.
Their findings have yet to be reviewed by the global scientific community.
– Volunteers abroad –
Since then, the company has conducted human tests, administering the serum to 144 volunteers in April in eastern Jiangsu province.
Sinovac, which has about 1,000 employees, expects to see results on the safety of its product by the end of June after the first two phases of clinical trials.
The company will then go on to phase three of the trials, which will determine if the vaccine is effective among virus carriers.
But Sinovac faces a problem for phase three. There are very few cases of infections in China today to have enough volunteers for the critical tests.
The country has largely controlled the coronavirus after imposing an unprecedented blockade on the central city of Wuhan and the surrounding Hubei province.
Only around 600 people remain hospitalized in the country and few new cases are reported every day.
This means that Sinovac may have to search for human guinea pigs abroad.
“We are currently talking to several countries in Europe and Asia,” said Meng Weining, director of international affairs for Sinovac.
Typically, it would take several thousand people for phase three, but “it is not easy to get these numbers in any country,” Meng said.
– ‘Day and night’ –
Even successfully in the following stages, Sinovac could not produce enough vaccines to treat the entire world population.
But Meng said the company is ready to collaborate with foreign partners who are already buying its other flu and hepatitis vaccines.
As its investigation continues, the company is preparing for mass production.
Sinovac is building a production facility in the south of the capital that should be operational by the end of the year.
“We work day and night, we have three shift work groups, for 24 hours, which means we don’t waste any minutes for the development of the vaccine,” Meng said.
