TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) – China has approved a new COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use, developed by the head of its Disease Control Center, adding a fifth shot 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 Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Microbiology said in a statement on Monday.
It is the fifth coronavirus vaccine approved in China and the fourth to receive approval for emergency use. Three of those who have received emergency approval have already been approved for general use. All were developed by Chinese companies.
The latest vaccine was jointly developed by Anhui Zhifei Longcom Biopharmaceutical Co. Ltd. and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The team completed phase 1 and phase 2 clinical trials in October and is currently conducting the final phase of testing in Uzbekistan, Pakistan and Indonesia, according to the statement.
The vaccine was approved for use in Uzbekistan on March 1. It is a three-dose injection with a one-month interval between vaccines, a company spokesman said. Like other vaccines that China has developed so far, it can be stored at normal refrigeration temperatures.
There is no publicly available information in peer-reviewed scientific journals on clinical trial data showing efficacy or safety. A company spokesman said the data could not be shared at this time, but that the company was providing the information to health officials.
The protein subunit vaccine is similar to many of the other vaccines that have been approved globally in that it trains the body to recognize the peak 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 the cells and then purify it, before being assembled into a vaccine and injected.
China has been slow to vaccinate its population of 1.4 billion people, despite having four vaccines approved for general use. The latest figures, according to government officials at a news conference on Monday in Beijing, are that the country administered 64.98 million doses of vaccines.
China is targeting what it considers to be key populations for vaccination so far, namely health workers, those working at the border or at customs and specific sectors that the government has selected. Other groups that have been absent so far, compared to many other countries, are the elderly and those with pre-existing illnesses.
Approved vaccines were previously limited to adults aged 18 to 59, as officials cited a lack of clinical trial data for those who are older, although the government appears to be signaling that the limits are now being lifted.
“We will promptly carry out the mass vaccination of the relevant populations,” said Li Bin, vice president of the National Health Commission, on Monday.
The official Chinese news agency Xinhua reported over the weekend that in certain neighborhoods in Beijing, local health centers have started offering vaccines to people aged 60 and over.
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This story has been corrected to show that the vaccine trains the body to recognize the peak protein that covers the surface of the coronavirus, not the surface of the coronavirus vaccine.