Chinese company Sinovac has announced that its COVID-19 vaccine candidate seems safe in the elderly, it is a little less effective in this population than in young adults.
Preliminary effects were obtained from an initial to intermediate trial of the Sinovac candidate vaccine, CoronaVac, in which the vaccine gave the impression of producing promising immune responses in 3 teams of participants.
Individuals from all 3 teams won two low-, medium- and high-dose CoronaVac injections, respectively. For 90% of the participants examined, a significant accumulation in antibody grades was observed.
In older subjects, the degrees of immune reaction were lower than those of their younger counterparts; the detailed effects have not yet been published through Sinovac, so it is unclear to what extent they differ.
Sinovac media representative Liu Peicheng told Reuters that the vaccine had not caused any serious side effects in the combined Phase 1 and Phase 2 studies involving another 421 people older than at least 60 years.
The Beijing-based biotechnology company introduced a large-scale Phase 3 of CoronaVac in early August and is expected to be tested in Indonesia and Brazil.
The Brazilian will recruit some 9,000 fitness professionals to run in specialized COVID-19 services in 12 clinical centers in several states of the country.
The company is also its vaccine candidate in Indonesia because the rate of new cases of coronavirus infection is too low in China, making it difficult to hire for a large-scale study.
Earlier this week, Sinovac CEO Yin Weidong said about 90% of the company’s employees, like their families, had won the experimental vaccine as a component of China’s emergency use program.
Sinovac introduced CoronaVac to about 2,000 to 3,000 workers and their families voluntarily, Weidong said.
Data collected through this program will make researchers better perceive the protection and tolerability of the vaccine, but will not be included in presentations to medical regulators as they are not part of the registered clinical trial protocols.
He added that workers were informed of possible side effects before taking the vaccine, possibly coming with fatigue, fever and pain.
September 8, 2020
But immune responses were not as effective as those of young adults