The photo taken on September 24, 2020 shows an employee working on a media tour of a new factory built to produce a Covid-19 coronavirus vaccine in Sinovac, one of the Chinese companies approved to conduct clinical trials. with potential coronavirus vaccines, in Beijing.
Wang Zhao | AFP | Getty Images
China will first focus on vaccinating high-risk groups during the winter and spring before the vaccination is extended to the general public, a senior health official said Saturday.
Zeng Yixin, deputy minister of China’s National Health Commission (NHC) and director of the State Council’s Vaccine R&D Working Group, warned that China’s Covid-19 prevention efforts are under increasing strain as temperatures drop.
“During the winter and spring seasons, conducting new coronavirus vaccinations among some key population groups is of great importance for the prevention of epidemics,” he said during a briefing.
China is actively seeking to build group immunity and the vaccination of high-risk groups – including workers in the cold chain industry, customs, health care, markets and public transport – is only the first part of a ‘step-by-step program’, ”he added.
China has included two vaccine candidates from Sinopharm and one from Sinovac Biotech in an emergency program launched in July targeting specific risk groups with a high risk of infection such as medical personnel and border inspectors.
It also has a CanSino Biologics vaccine approved for military use, but has not approved any vaccine for use by the general public.
Zheng Zhongwei, the NHC official who leads China’s Covid-19 vaccine development team, said China has administered more than 1 million emergency doses to members of high-risk groups since July and that “no serious side effects have been identified so far.”
“For the vaccines we are moving to quite soon, the number of cases needed for the interim phase of phase III clinical trials has already been obtained,” said Zheng, although he did not specify which products.
The data has been submitted to the medical products regulatory agency, which will approve the vaccines if they meet the necessary conditions, he added.