China's Sinovac eyes massive global testing of COVID-19 vaccine, Russia among options
Moscow/Sputnik/UNI: Sinovac Biotech, which is at the forefront of efforts to halt the COVID-19 pandemic, is planning to conduct phase III of the clinical studies of its potential vaccine globally and is even eyeing Russia for trials since they need active pathogen and the high number of active cases, which is not a case in China, Weining Meng, the senior director of Oversea Business of Sinovac, told Sputnik.
The race intensifies for nations around the globe to develop an effective vaccine against the coronavirus, which has already infected over 4.1 million people and killed nearly 290,000.
The Beijing-based Sinovac biopharmaceutical company, the developer behind one of the most promising vaccine candidates, has announced successful results among animal trials, which have been published in Science magazine.
The Chinese firm, which is the first company in the world to market the H1N1 vaccine, verified the safety of its potential coronavirus vaccine after phase I/phase II clinical trials.
Now, the company expects to move to phase III, in which the vaccine is given to thousands of people and tested for efficacy and safety, this summer.
"Normally phase I/phase II takes about two or three months. That means that we should complete all the study before August or July. After that we should go to phase III clinical study," Meng said, adding that the potential COVID-19 vaccine may be produced as quickly as this year.
However, he admitted that the Sinovac scientists would face difficulties during the late-stage trials since China has largely curbed the spread of the infection. Therefore, the company is eyeing other possibilities that would allow them to conduct effective phase III research.
"We are communicating with the WHO and other partners from other countries to see whether we can have the opportunity to conduct phase III in other countries. So, I think it's still possible. We can finish the study within a year," he said.
The epidemiological situation in Russia, where over 10,000 COVID-19 cases emerge every day, can be "suitable" for phase III of the clinical trials, according to Meng. As of Tuesday, the total count in Russia has reached 232,243, making the country second in the global number of cases, behind the United States.
However, other countries that continue to see an increase in COVID-19 cases can also be used for the conduction of the vaccine trials, Meng added.
Speaking on the efficacy of Sinovac's upcoming vaccine, which the company began to develop in January, Meng said that it was still too early to jump on any conclusions.
"I'm not sure but from our animal tests, we see a nearly hundred percent. But the number of animals is very limited. So, we cannot give a conclusion on that. They really need to go through the clinical study to see," he said.
The clinical studies will shed light on the virus and the safety and efficacy of the vaccine against it, according to Meng.
"[The virus] is totally new, the whole human population just has a few months of research on this kind of virus," he concluded.
Sinovac, which has a nearly 20-years history, is one of over 100 biotech and pharmaceutical companies that are working around the clock, conducting preclinical and clinical trials to find a vaccine that can challenge the current pandemic. According to the World Health Organization, there are eight vaccine candidates in clinical evaluation, with another 94 in preclinical evaluation.
Support Our Journalism
We cannot do without you.. your contribution supports unbiased journalism
IBNS is not driven by any ism- not wokeism, not racism, not skewed secularism, not hyper right-wing or left liberal ideals, nor by any hardline religious beliefs or hyper nationalism. We want to serve you good old objective news, as they are. We do not judge or preach. We let people decide for themselves. We only try to present factual and well-sourced news.
Support objective journalism for a small contribution.
