BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s National Biotec Group (CNBG) and Sinovac Biotech Ltd said Saturday that 4 countries agreed to conduct complex human testing of their coronavirus vaccine applicants as China intensified its efforts in the global race.
Serbia and Pakistan and among the new countries that are accepting Phase 3 trials, while Chinese corporations seek more knowledge for final approvals of potential vaccines, while reducing the number of new infections in China makes the country an unsatisfactory control site.
Soft green regulation for mass use requires corporations to demonstrate that medicines are effective enough with the knowledge compiled from large-scale Phase 3 trials for a possible vaccine opposed to a virus that has inflamed more than 26 million people, with COVID-19 killing more than 870,000.
China has two legal candidate CNBG vaccines and one from Sinovac to be used in limited teams of others at higher risk of infection, such as medical personnel.
Serbia will verify the two CNBG vaccines and Pakistan will verify that the candidate evolved through the company’s Beijing unit as a component of CNBG’s Phase 3 human program, Vice President Zhang Yuntao told Reuters.
Phase 3 testing is expected to involve another 50,000 people in some 10 countries, Zhang said.Testing has begun in the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Peru, Morocco, Argentina and Jordan.
Foreign countries have expressed their goal of ordering 500 million combined doses of CNBG vaccines, Zhang said.
The CoronaVac vaccine in Sinovac, which is currently being tested in Brazil and Indonesia, has been approved by two other countries for 3 tests, said Helen Yang, Senior Director of Global Strategy and Business Development at Sinovac.
He refused to call countries because the data is confidential.
(Report through Roxanne Liu and Miyoung Kim; Editing through William Mallard)