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BEIJING: About 90 percent of Sinovac Biotech employees and their families have taken an experimental coronavirus vaccine developed by the Chinese company as part of the country’s emergency use program, its CEO said on Sunday (6 June September).
The scope of vaccines under the emergency program, which China launched in July but has released few details about, indicates how actively it is using experimental vaccines in hopes of protecting essential workers against a potential resurgence of COVID-19. even when trials are still in progress. on going.
The program is aimed at specific groups, including medical personnel and those working in food markets and in the transport and service sectors.
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Sinovac, whose CoronaVac is in phase 3 clinical trials and has been included in the emergency schedule, offered the candidate vaccine to approximately 2,000 to 3,000 employees and their families on a voluntary basis, CEO Yin Weidong told Reuters.
“As a vaccine developer and manufacturer, a new outbreak could directly affect our vaccine production,” Yin said on the sidelines of an international trade fair in Beijing, explaining why his company was included in the emergency program.
The data collected from the program could provide evidence of the vaccine’s safety, but such data, which are not part of the registered clinical trial protocols, will not be used as primary material that regulators review to judge whether to approve the vaccine for commercial use. , Yin said.
He said those who chose to get vaccinated, including his wife and parents, had been informed of the possible side effects before receiving the injection, and that his vaccine only completed the initial and mid-stage trials.
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Yin, who also received the injection, said doctors asked them about their health conditions before vaccination and that the rate of occurrence of adverse reactions among those vaccinated has been “very low.”
Side effects after taking CoronaVac include fatigue, fever and pain, with mostly mild symptoms, according to the results of a Sinovac-sponsored mid-stage trial, involving 600 participants and published last month before peer review. .
No vaccine has passed the final large-scale trials to show that it is effective and safe enough to protect people against the virus that has caused more than 870,000 deaths worldwide.
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