[ad_1]
TAIPEI: China is rapidly increasing the number of people receiving its experimental coronavirus vaccines, with a city offering one to the general public and a biotech company offering a free one to students traveling abroad.
The city of Jiaxing, south of Shanghai, is offering a vaccine under development by Sinovac, it said in an announcement on Thursday (October 15). He said high-risk groups, including people who are “responsible for basic city operations,” will be given priority, but residents with emergency needs can also sign up.
The vaccine is in the final stage of clinical testing, but has not yet been approved. The city government said it is provided under an emergency authorization.
China National Biotech Group, another Chinese vaccine company, is offering its vaccine free to students studying abroad in a strategy that health experts say raises safety and ethical concerns.
READ: Pfizer to include children in COVID-19 vaccine trial
More than 168,000 people signed up for the vaccine through an online survey and more than 91,000 are being considered, CNBG said on its website. That page had been removed on Tuesday.
Chinese pharmaceutical companies have five vaccines in the final stages of testing, but none are approved for public use. They are part of a global race to develop a vaccine that, if successful, offers the fledgling Chinese industry the potential for global prestige and sales.
Top Chinese health officials have promised a vaccine for the general public before the end of this year.
CNBG’s vaccine has already been administered to medical workers and employees of Chinese companies that are sent abroad under an emergency authorization for people in high-risk categories. It has administered the vaccine to 350,000 people outside of its clinical trials, a company executive said in September. The trials have around 40,000 people signed up.
“Currently, it seems that Chinese students going abroad have a strong desire to get vaccinated,” a CNBG employee told a state newspaper, based on the results of the September survey.
READ: China in talks with WHO on evaluating its COVID-19 vaccines for global use
Syringes of a coronavirus vaccine produced by Sinovac are displayed during a media visit to its factory in Beijing, China, on September 24, 2020. (Photo: AP / Ng Han Guan)
Students in China who must start their semesters abroad say they want the vaccine because they worry about getting sick.
“It is very dangerous there, the city we study in is a red danger zone,” said a student who goes to school in Poland and only gave her last name, Ouyang. He signed up for the CNBG vaccine in September, but has not yet received a response. “We all really want this vaccine.”
A student who must go to Britain said she signed up through the online link after her classmates said they had received the vaccine.
The student, who only gave her name in English, Sally, said she began hearing in September that the vaccine was available to people like her. She said other students said they may need to travel to Beijing, the national capital, or Wuhan, where the outbreak broke out in December, to receive the vaccine.
If the vaccine works, it could help protect students heading to Europe or the United States, where the pandemic still continues, medical experts said. But they said developers need to make it clear that it’s untested and keep track of what happens to the people who receive it.
READ: Amid rising COVID-19, WHO urges Europe to step up controls now to save lives
If the vaccine doesn’t work, then “this is giving people a false sense of security,” said Sridhar Venkatapuram, a bioethicist at the Institute for Global Health at King’s College London.
The ruling Communist Party declared the coronavirus under control in March, but warned that the risk of a new outbreak is high. Travelers and visitors to public buildings are still being monitored for signs of infection. Those arriving from abroad must be quarantined for two weeks. The country has reported 4,634 deaths and 85,622 confirmed cases.
This week, 10 million people were tested in the eastern port of Qingdao after 12 cases were found last weekend, the government said on Friday. That ended a period of nearly two months with no local virus transmissions reported within China.
READ: Chinese city of Qingdao says COVID-19 cluster dates back to two dock workers
It was unclear whether Chinese students were being offered the CNBG vaccine under the same emergency authorization as Jiaxing residents.
The agency that oversees drug and vaccine approvals, the National Medical Products Administration, did not respond to faxed questions. CNBG did not respond to a request for comment.
The final stage of clinical trials, conducted in larger groups, is used to find rare side effects and study the effectiveness of a treatment. The first and second stage trials are designed to determine whether a vaccine or a treatment is safe.
“The manufacturer has an obligation to obtain follow-up information” on people who receive a vaccine under emergency use, K Arnold Chan, an expert on drug regulation at National Taiwan University, said in an email.
Failure to do that “is irresponsible and does not meet international standards,” he wrote.
More than 600,000 Chinese students studied abroad before the pandemic, according to figures from the Ministry of Education. They make up a large part of the foreign student body in the United States, Great Britain, Australia, and a few other countries.
Western universities “are not protecting their students,” Venkatapuram said. “Basically, the company offers protection to its citizens when they leave China, which is essentially what any country would ideally do.”
CHECK THIS: Our comprehensive coverage of the coronavirus outbreak and its developments
Download our app or subscribe to our Telegram channel for the latest updates on the coronavirus outbreak: https://cna.asia/telegram
