July 20 (UPI) – A vaccine opposed to COVID-19 developed in China appears to be effective in selling an immune reaction opposed to the virus in a small trial, according to a test published Monday through The Lancet.
The vaccine is in a weakened human virus without blood, or adenovirus, which can infect human cells but is not able to cause disease, the researchers said.
Phase 3 trials, which assess protection and efficacy in more participants and will need to be completed before a vaccine or drug can be approved for widespread use, are already underway, they said.
“This is a step in evaluating this early-stage experimental vaccine,” Feng-Cai Zhu of the Jiangsu Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention in China said in a feng-Cai Zhu press release.
Phase 2 trial of the experimental vaccine in Wuhan in April, Zhu and his colleagues said.
A total of 253 other people won a maximum dose of the vaccine, they evolved through Chinese drug manufacturer CanSino Biologics, while 129 earned a low dose, they said.
However, for younger participants, older participants tended to have particularly weaker immune responses after receiving the vaccine, the researchers said.
“Because older adults are at the greatest threat of serious illnesses and even death related to COVID-19 infection, they are a target population for a vaccine,” Wei Chen, one of the researchers involved in the study, said in a press release.
“It is imaginable that an additional dose is needed to induce a more potent immune reaction in the elderly population, however, additional studies are being conducted to compare this,” said Chen, of the Beijing Biotechnology Institute in China.