In some areas, interior design is still in progress. Outside, construction trucks dug dirt.
The 215,000 square meter (20,000 square meter) production plant was built in recent months specifically for the production of a Covid-19 vaccine developed by Chinese pharmaceutical company Sinovac Biotech.
CoronaVac, Sinovac’s vaccine candidate, is part of China’s pressure to advance immunizations against the deadly novel coronavirus – and to demonstrate its scientific prowess.
The latest tests from CoronaVac are rolled out in Brazil and Indonesia with about 11,000 volunteers.
“If all goes well, we hope to have some results by the end of the year,” said Helen Yang, director of investor relations at Sinovac, of the manufacturing company CaronaVac in the Daxing district of the Chinese capital.
The Nasdaq-listed biotech company began developing its vaccine in late January, less than a week after Wuhan – the original epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak in China – went into a tight lockdown. Construction of the plant began in March, and Yang said the facility would eventually produce 300 million doses of the vaccine a year, if approved by China’s National Medical Products Administration.
CaronaVac uses an old-fashioned approach – using an inactive whole virus to stimulate the body to develop immunity. The virus is grown under controlled conditions and chemically killed so that it cannot replicate to cause disease when injected into the body. This method has long been proven effective with other viruses, and is still used in polio and flu shots, such as the rabies vaccine.
A Sinovac spokesman said the company chose an inactive vaccine because it was most familiar with this approach.
The US is pushing ahead with a newer type of vaccine made with genetic material from the virus. This type of vaccine is faster to produce because whole samples of a virus do not need to be cultured, but less is known about which genetic material to select from the virus to replicate to stimulate a strong immune response.
To follow the preclinical process – where researchers develop the vaccine candidate and test on animals – Yang said the company had conducted several studies in parallel so it could select the best results.
Sinovac has also worked closely with China’s equivalent of the Food and Drug Administration to speed up the approval process. “Once we complete a particular study, we submit the data … immediately so they can begin reviewing,” Yang added.
But the Phrase 3 trial requires large-scale testing of thousands of participants.
By June, China had contained the coronavirus for the most part, and struggled with only minor, sporadic outbreaks. China had reported 84,996 cases of Covid-19 by Wednesday, with less than 2,000 new infections since early June – and more than a third of those were imported, according to the country’s National Health Commission (NHC).
Yang said the small number of newly reported Covid-19 cases in China did not meet the necessary conditions for a Phase 3 trial, which Sinovac reached an agreement with Brazil – the second largest in the world for infections, with more than 3.6 million reported cases.
In collaboration with the Butantan Institute in São Paulo, a Phase 3 study was launched in late July with 9,000 volunteers, all health care professionals who have worked with Covid-19 patients but are not infected with the virus, according to São Paulo officials .
In return, Brazil was promised 120 million doses of the vaccine, if the tests found it to be effective.
The tests continue, but Dimas Covas, president of the Butantan Institute, said on Wednesday preliminary data showed that CoronaVac caused immunity in 97% of people who were vaccinated after two doses – a level he said was “fundamental”. around the chain of transmission of the coronavirus. ”
Covas said earlier this month that data on the effectiveness of the vaccine may be available by October – possibly starting the formal approval process in a matter of months. He expects the vaccine to be available to the Brazilian public by January.
“I am very optimistic. I think it would be a reasonable time frame given the achievements so far,” he said at a public hearing at the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies.
A race for vaccines
With the global race for vaccines heating up, Yang played down competition between biotech companies – saying that demand was too great for one company to meet.
The real competition, she said, is with the virus.
“Our speed must be faster than the transmission of the virus instead of competing with others. We want everyone to be successful then there will be enough supply to protect people,” Yang said.
Ivan Hung, a specialist in infectious diseases at Hong Kong University School of Medicine, said vaccination is key for countries like China where strict measures have helped keep the percentage of infected people in the population low.
“The total immunity is very low. And so in these places is definitely the way forward vaccinations,” he said.
Geopolitical implications
China’s leader Xi Jinping has repeatedly called on Chinese scientists to accelerate the research and development of coronavirus vaccines. Xiao Yaqing, the country’s former top market regulator, told pharmaceutical companies last month to treat the development of coronavirus vaccine as an “important political task.”
Xiao has meanwhile been appointed Minister of Industry and Information Technology.
Not only would a safe and effective coronavirus vaccine save lives, provide scientific prestige and represent a thriving opportunity for economic recovery, it could also have significant geopolitical consequences.
Winning the vaccine contest would give China a chance to sharpen its global position by positioning itself as a leader in the fight against the pandemic.
Last month, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said he had asked Xi to help the Southeast Asian nation gain priority access to a Chinese vaccine.
“Emergency use”
Last weekend, a senior NHC official revealed that China has been using an experimental vaccine on people working in high-risk occupations since July, including frontline medical professionals and border inspectors.
The vaccine, developed by Sinopharm, is still in Phrase 3 trials in the United Arab Emirates, Peru, Morocco and Argentina.
Zheng Zhongwei, director of the NHC’s Science and Technology Development Center, told the Chinese state broadcaster that the “emergency use” of a vaccine in a “major public health incident” was in line with the country’s fax law.
“One of the potential dangers if you release a vaccine too early is that it would make it difficult, if not impossible, for other vaccines to enroll people in their trial,” he said.
CNN’s Shanshan Wang attributed to reports.
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