China Vaccine state.1 Mar 2021 18:20
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China pushes on with vaccine efforts, with 16 candidates approved for trials
Coronavirus vaccine/therapeutics illustration
Feb. 23, 2021
By David Ho
HONG KONG – China is steadily greenlighting more COVID-19 vaccines and drugs to go deeper into the clinic, giving the country a growing arsenal against the disease. To date, China’s National Medical Products Administration (NMPA) has approved a handful of drugs and 16 domestically developed COVID-19 vaccine candidates for trials, up from 11 in September 2020.
“At the moment, a total of 22 drugs have been given urgent approval to carry out clinical trials for the treatment and prevention of new coronavirus pneumonia and related indications,” a government spokesperson said.
From the total, 16 are vaccine candidates. Six of them are already in phase III trials, two of which have received conditional approvals, according to data from the World Health Organization (WHO).
To date, China has also granted conditional marketing approvals to two inactivated COVID-19 vaccines. The first, BBIBP-CorV, was China National Pharmaceutical Group Corp. (Sinopharm)’s vaccine on Dec. 30, 2020. The second was the Coronavac vaccine developed by Sinovac Biotech Ltd., which received its conditional green light from the NMPA administration on Feb. 5 this year. Largely based on these two vaccines and the many vaccines being given out as part of the multiple ongoing trials, China has administered tens of millions of shots.
“As of Feb. 9, China has administered 40.52 million COVID-19 vaccine doses to key groups,” said Mi Feng, a National Health Commission spokesperson.
The Chinese mainland reported no new locally transmitted COVID-19 cases on Feb. 19, according to the National Health Commission.
Deep in the clinic
Out of the six phase III candidates, four are inactivated virus vaccines. Sinopharm has two candidates in the category. The first is a collaboration with the Wuhan Institute of Biological Products and the other is another collaboration with the Beijing Institute of Biological Products Co. Ltd.
A third late-stage inactivated virus vaccines candidate was developed by Sinovac Research and Development Co. Ltd. while the Institute of Medical Biology and the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences have developed a fourth candidate.
Another Chinese candidate belongs to Cansino Biologics Inc. and the Beijing Institute of Biotechnology, which have a recombinant novel coronavirus vaccine (Adenovirus type 5 vector) in phase III trials. It was approved exclusively for use on Chinese military personnel in June 2020.
A sixth vaccine candidates in phase III trials, developed by Anhui Zhifei Longcom Biopharmaceutical and the Institute of Microbiology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has also joined the list with a protein subunit vaccine.
Multiple approaches
While the list is heavy on inactivated vaccines, different developers are taking at least four other technological ap
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