China’s drug regulator has approved the country’s first coronavirus vaccine for general public use, a sign of confidence in the experimental vaccines the country plans to launch within and beyond its borders.
China’s National Medical Products Administration has given authorization for a Covid-19 vaccine developed by state-owned companies China National Biotec Group Co., a unit of Sinopharm, officials told reporters in Beijing on Thursday.
With the approval, the vaccine – which has been authorized for emergency use in China since the middle of the year along with other pioneering vaccines – will be made commercially available, meaning that it can be administered to the general population. US regulators in Singapore approved vaccines last month, including vaccines developed by Pfizer Inc., Moderna Inc. and AstraZeneca Plc, but these vaccines were largely for emergency use, a status granted by China to its developers months ago.
China will target members of the population most at risk in their inoculations, including the elderly and those with pre-existing diseases, and then distribute the vaccines to the general public, said Zeng Yixin, deputy minister of the National Health Commission country, at the briefing.
The country has administered more than 4.5 million doses of the Covid-19 vaccine, with 3 million administered since mid-December alone, Zeng said. It is said to be with the goal of inoculating 50 million people against the virus by the beginning of February, before the annual Lunar New Year holiday. The proportion of adverse reactions, including allergies, is about two out of 1 million, Zeng said on Thursday.
Faces challenges
After the briefing, state media, including People’s Daily, reported that the vaccine would be provided free of charge to Chinese citizens. Although Zeng raised the possibility that the photos were free, specific details about the launch were not provided.
“Vaccines are by nature a public good and the price varies according to the scale of use,” said Zeng at the briefing. “But the broader premise is that it will be offered free to the entire population.”
The green light for broader use underscores China’s determination to be a major player in providing vaccines to its own people and countries around the world. However, the nation faces challenges to win the trust of millions of people who may have to rely on their vaccines.
China is struggling to make the world trust its vaccines
Chinese developers have been slow compared to their Western peers in releasing clinical trial data, raising questions about transparency, effectiveness and safety as the world puts a laser focus on which vaccines will be most successful in combating the pandemic. Pfizer and Moderna, which have developed cutting-edge coronavirus vaccines that use messenger RNA technology, have sent publicly available data to the FDA. AstraZeneca’s Peer-reviewed results were published in The Lancet this month.
CNBG will publish detailed data on its injections in recognized international medical journals, President Wu Yonglin said on Thursday.
“We cannot simply compare whether Chinese vaccines are better or foreign vaccines,” said Zheng Zhongwei, an official with the National Health Commission. “
Lack of confidence
Conflicting provisional data released by some of the companies contributed to the lack of confidence in China’s vaccines. CNBG said on Wednesday that its shot is effective in preventing Covid-19 in 79.3% of people, less than the 86% previously reported in its tests in the UAE.
Rival home developer Sinovac Biotech Ltd., for its part, has not yet produced definitive results on the effectiveness of its vaccine, with tests in Brazil and Turkey suggesting that the injection has a protection rate on both sides of 90%. The company is still reconciling the results of the independent Phase III tests carried out in Brazil, Turkey, Indonesia and Chile, said a person familiar with the tests last week.
Pfizer and Moderna injections produced better results, reducing symptomatic Covid-19 cases by more than 90% in giant tests. But Chinese vaccines have the advantage of being easier to store and distribute because they do not need to be frozen, as with mRNA vaccines, making distribution to rural areas and developing countries potentially easier.
Geopolitical Influence
Approval for general use is unlikely to make much of a difference in China itself, as the country largely eliminated local transmission of the virus through strict local blockages and mass testing. But it could be a game changer for other countries facing uncontrollable outbreaks – such as Indonesia and Peru – that have vaccine deals from China.
Vaccines can also help China gain geopolitical influence and restore an image tainted by criticism of its initial response to the virus and its role as the original epicenter. President Xi Jinping has vowed to share any successful vaccines abroad, and China has joined Covax, a program supported by the World Health Organization that aims to ensure an equitable supply of effective vaccines to rich and poor countries.
Race from China to Covid19 Vaccine raises safety issues
Chinese vaccines will be priced fairly and reasonably as a public good for the world, and the country is considering several ways to distribute vaccines to developing countries, including donations, said Shen Bo, an official at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Beijing mobilized its regulators, research institutes and companies to create vaccines shortly after the new pathogen first appeared in the Chinese city of Wuhan, in central China, in late 2019. This gave vaccine candidates an advantage and they were among the first to start testing on humans.
Black market
But Western peers were quicker to provide data on major Phase III tests. The near elimination of the pathogen in China caused delays for domestic developers, who had to tour to find test sites abroad where the pathogen was still spreading rapidly.
Despite the delays, more than a million Chinese were vaccinated under the emergency use program – the definition of which has been expanded to include frontline medical workers, civil servants and students who needed to travel abroad. Even government officials and corporate executives had access to the photos, adding to the fear that a the black market was developing.
China now has 14 vaccines in clinical trials, five of them in the last phase of Phase III, said Xu Nanping, deputy head of the Ministry of Science and Technology, at Thursday’s press conference.
– With the help of John Liu, Claire Che, Kenneth Wong and Timothy Annett
(Updates with vaccine reports provided free of charge from the sixth paragraph)