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China announces it has produced the first coronavirus vaccine, a vaccine it already plans to export. One of the four Chinese laboratories licensed to conduct clinical trials, Sinovac Biotech, says it is ready to produce 100 million doses a year of its experimental vaccine against the new coronavirus, which appeared in China in late 2019 and has spread throughout the world. the world. despite the fact that it failed all tests, reports AFP, according to News.ro.
A man in a white robe displays one of these vaccines in a laboratory in northern Beijing. Perhaps you are holding the long-awaited remedy.
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The laboratory looks confident. In 2009, he took the lead in competition and became the first in the world to launch an H1N1 swine flu vaccine.
At their vast facilities in Changping, outside the Chinese capital, the laboratories monitor the quality of the experimental vaccine based on inert pathogens, already produced in thousands of copies. In the white box with orange, the product has the same name: “Coronavac”.
TESTED ON THE MONKEY
Despite the fact that the treatment is still far from being approved, the manufacturer must demonstrate that it is capable of producing it on a large scale and submit the batches to the control of the authorities. Therefore, production was launched before the end of clinical trials.
More than 100 laboratories around the world face the first to develop a vaccine, but fewer than ten of them have contracted a human clinical trial, according to the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
This is the case of Sinovac, who assures that it obtained encouraging results in the monkey, before administering its serum to 144 volunteers for the first time, in mid-April, in Jiangsu (east).
However, the laboratory, created in 2001, does not announce when its half-milliliter injection will be commercialized.
“This is the question everyone is asking,” admits the brand’s director, Liu Peicheng.
According to the WHO, the production of a vaccine can take between 12 and 18 months.
TEST ABROAD
Sinovac, which has 1,000 employees, expects to get the first results on the safety of its product in late June, in tests in phases 1 and 2, Director of International Affairs Meng Weining told AFP.
These tests are simply to verify that the vaccine is not dangerous to humans. To ensure it is effective, a phase 3 test is required on some carriers of the virus.
The problem is that as of now, “only a few cases are reported in China every day,” Meng notes. Unless there is a second wave in China, the group will have to test the vaccine on people with positive results abroad.
“We are currently in contact with several countries in Europe and Asia,” he said.
“A phase 3 test includes several thousand people. It is not easy to obtain these figures in any country,” he predicts.
WORK AT NIGHT
However, the group launched construction of a 100 million-dose production facility in southern Beijing, which will be operational by the end of the year.
“We work day and night, we work at night, which means we don’t waste a minute,” Meng said.
Compared to the world population, a possible Sinovac vaccine will not be enough to protect the planet. But Meng says his Nasdaq group is ready to “collaborate” with his foreign partners, to whom he sells his existing flu or hepatitis vaccines.
Being the first to offer a covid-19 vaccine would be revenge for China, which wants to make people forget that the pandemic originated in their territory.
“We are receiving a lot of support from the Chinese government,” Meng said. “Not so much money”, but cooperation with public institutes from which Sonovac sources viral tuplins.
In addition to Sinovac, Beijing approved the clinical trials of three other experimental vaccines, one launched by the Military School of Medical Sciences and the CanSino biotechnology group, another by the Institute of Biological Products and the Institute of Virology in Wuhan, the new city. coronavirus, and the third from the China Biotics group, which hired 32 volunteers on Tuesday.
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