The Chief Executive Officer of Sinovac Biotech Ltd on Sunday said that about 90% of the company employees and their families have taken an experimental coronavirus vaccine, developed by the Chinese firm under the country’s emergency use program.
The emergency vaccination program which was launched by China in July, is using experimental vaccines in the hopes of protecting essential workers against a potential COVID-19 resurgence, even as trials are still underway.
The program is intended for specific groups, including medical staffers and those who work at food markets and in the transportation and service sectors.
No vaccine has passed final, large-scale trials to prove it is effectiveness including the vaccine approved by Russia in August.
However, eight potential vaccines whose developers/manufacturers include University of Oxford/AstraZeneca, Moderna/NIAID, BioNTech/Fosun Pharma/Pfizer, Sinovac, Wuhan Institute of Biological Products/Sinopharm, Gamaleya Research Institute, etc are in phase three clinical trials according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
Sinovac, whose CoronaVac is in Phase 3 clinical trials and is undergoing large clinical trials in Brazil, and has been included in the emergency scheme, offered the candidate vaccine to approximately 2,000 to 3,000 employees and their families on a voluntary basis, according to the CEO Yin Weidong Reuters reported.
“As a vaccine developer and manufacturer, a new outbreak could directly impact our vaccine production,” Yin said.
Yin said, said he took the vaccination shot. Noting that the adverse effect is “very low”. He added that the his wife and parents also took the shot.
Side effects after taking CoronaVac include fatigue, fever and pain, with mostly mild symptoms, according to results of a mid-stage trial sponsored by Sinovac, involving 600 participants and published last month ahead of peer review.
Data gathered from the program could offer evidence of the vaccine’s safety, but such data, which is not part of the registered clinical trial protocols, will not be used as main materials that regulators review in judging whether to approve the vaccine for commercial use, Yin said.
Globally more than 26.9 million cases of Covid-19 has been confirmed with over 17.9 million recoveries and 880,008 deaths recorded according to John Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Centre.
Global recovery rate is 66.76% and death rate is 3.27%.
Written by;
Ifunanya Ikueze
