As the global race to produce a Covid-19 vaccine continues, China appears to have made huge strides, with one of its vaccine front-runners, Sinovac, already making its way abroad, says an article published in BBC News.
Shipments of Beijing-based biopharmaceutical company Sinovac’s Covid-19 vaccine CoronaVac have arrived in Indonesia in preparation for a mass vaccination campaign.
Difference between Sinovac and some other vaccines
CoronaVac is an inactivated vaccine, which works by using killed viral particles to expose the body’s immune system to the virus without risking a serious disease response.
The Moderna and Pfizer vaccines are mRNA vaccines – which means part of the coronavirus’ genetic code is injected into the body. They trigger the body to begin making viral proteins, but not the whole virus, which is enough to train the immune system to attack.
On paper, one of Sinovac’s main advantages is that it can be stored in a standard refrigerator at 2-8 degrees Celsius.
It is -20C for Moderna’s vaccine and -70C for Pfizer’s vaccine.
Associate Prof Luo Dahai Comments
“CoronaVac is a more traditional method [of vaccine] that is successfully used in many well known vaccines like rabies,” Associate Prof Luo Dahai of the Nanyang Technological University told the BBC.
“mRNA vaccines are a new type of vaccine and there is (currently) no successful example (of them) being used in the population,” Prof Luo adds.
Prof Luo explains that “it is difficult to make comments about the vaccine’s efficacy at this point in time given the limited information available”.
“Based on the preliminary data. CoronaVac is likely an effective vaccine, but we do need to wait for the results of the phase three trials,” he said.
Effectiveness of Sinovac
It’s hard to say at this point in time. According to scientific journal The Lancet, we currently only have information from the first and second phase trials of CoronaVac.
Zhu Fengcai Comments
Zhu Fengcai, one of the paper’s authors, said “those results which are based on 144 participants in the phase one trial and 600 in the phase two trial – meant the vaccine was suitable for emergency use”.
Production of vaccine
Sinovac will be able to produce 300 million doses a year in its newly built 20,000 sq m production plant, its chairman told state media outlet CGTN.
Like all the other vaccines, it requires two doses.
Cost of Sinovac
It’s not clear how much it might cost. But earlier this year, a BBC team in the Chinese city of Yiwu saw that nurses were administering the injections for a fee of around 400 yuan ($60; £45).
Bio Farma, a state-owned firm in Indonesia said it would cost around 200,000 rupiah ($13.60; £10) locally.
That is still far higher than the Oxford vaccine, but lower than Moderna.
Other vaccine candidates of China
Four Chinese vaccines are in the final stages of development.
One of them, Sinopharm, has already been distributed to nearly a million people in China under a controversial emergency programme.
Professor Dale Fisher
“It is normal to wait for an analysis of phase three trials before ramping up a vaccine programme through emergency use authorisation,” Professor Dale Fisher of the National University of Singapore earlier told news site CNBC.
