TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) – China has approved a new COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use, a vaccine developed by the head of the Center for Disease Control, adding a fifth injection to its arsenal.
Gao Fu, the head of China’s CDC, led the development of a protein subunit vaccine that was approved by regulators for emergency use last week, the Institute of Microbiology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences said in a statement Monday.
It is the fifth coronavirus vaccine to be approved in China and the fourth to receive emergency approval. Three of those who have received an emergency permit have now been approved for general use. They are all developed by Chinese companies.
The latest vaccine has been jointly developed by Anhui Zhifei Longcom Biopharmaceutical Co. Ltd. and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The team completed phase 1 and phase 2 clinical studies in October and is currently conducting final phase studies in Uzbekistan, Pakistan and Indonesia, according to the statement.
The vaccine was approved for use in Uzbekistan on March 1. It’s a three-dose injection with a month between injections, a company spokesman said. Like other vaccines that China has developed to date, it can be stored at normal refrigeration temperatures.
There is no publicly available information in peer-reviewed scientific journals about the clinical trial data demonstrating efficacy or safety. A company spokesperson said the data could not be shared at this time, but the company provided the information to health authorities.
The protein subunit vaccine is similar to many of the other vaccines approved worldwide in that it trains the body to recognize the spike protein that covers the surface of the coronavirus, although the difference lies in how it tells the body to recognize the protein. . Scientists grow a harmless version of the protein in cells and then purify it before combining it into a vaccine and injecting it.
China has been slow to vaccinate its population of 1.4 billion people, despite four vaccines having been approved for general use. According to the latest figures, according to government officials at a news conference on Monday in Beijing, it has administered 64.98 million doses of vaccines.
China has so far focused on what it considers to be the most important populations for vaccination, namely health workers, those working at the border or customs, and specific industries selected by the government. Other groups that have so far been noticeably absent compared to many other countries are the elderly and those with pre-existing conditions.
The approved vaccines were previously limited to adults 18-59 years old, as officials cited a lack of clinical trial data for those older, although the government seems to indicate that the limits are now being set aside.
“We will immediately conduct mass vaccination of relevant populations,” Li Bin, a deputy chairman of the National Health Commission, said Monday.
China’s official Xinhua News Agency reported this weekend that local health centers in certain areas of Beijing have started offering the vaccines to people over 60.
This story has been corrected to show that the vaccine trains the body to recognize the spike protein that covers the surface of the coronavirus, not the surface of the coronavirus vaccine.