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BEIJING: Nearly one million people have taken an experimental COVID-19 vaccine developed by the China National Pharmaceutical Group (Sinopharm) through the country’s emergency use program, the firm said late on Wednesday (Nov 18) .
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 by 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.
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For the emergency program, two vaccine candidates developed by Sinopharm’s subsidiary China National Biotec Group (CNBG) and a third developed by Sinovac Biotech have been used.
It is unclear 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 have been taken from more than 40,000 participants 14 days after they took the second dose, the article said, citing Liu, without breaking down the figures for each vaccine.
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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.
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