China is offering unproven coronavirus vaccines to citizens travelling abroad because the virus is petering out in the country, it emerged today.
Employees at large state-run companies going abroad for work are being recruited to take either of two vaccines developed by the China National Biotec Group.
China desperately wants to become the first country to create a cure for the disease after it emerged in the city of Wuhan in December and wreaked havoc around the world.
But because there are now so few cases of the coronavirus among its own citizens, real-world clinical trials are difficult. As a result, state-owned companies are trying to recruit travelling staff to have the jabs so they can test them out.
Sources would not say which companies’ employees are being targeted, and it is not clear how their health will be monitored to check that the jab works.
With no proven treatment for coronavirus in sight, a vaccine is considered the golden ticket to ending the global pandemic.
Several global pharmaceutical giants in the race to make a vaccine have promised a fully fledged jab by September, including British firm AstraZeneca.
The Cambridge-based firm is also trialling its AZD1222 jab, developed by Oxford University, abroad because of fears the virus will vanish in Britain.
China is offering unproven coronavirus vaccines to citizens travelling abroad in a bid to become the first in the world to produce a jab ahead of international rivals (file)
AZD1222 jab, developed by Oxford University, China’s Centre for Disease Control and Prevention pondered the idea of vaccinating people travelling abroad back in April to help bump recruitment numbers up.
Zhu Fengcai, deputy director of a local branch of the public health body, said the tactic could be particularly effective for those travelling to high-risk areas.
It is unclear which state-run firms are being targeted to offer up their employees for recruitment.
It’s also not known how the China National Biotec Group (CNBC) will monitor employees’ health when they travel abroad after taking the vaccine.
The experimental vaccines are currently coming out of the other end of Phase II trials after being proven safe in 2,000 humans who received them.
But whether or not the injections actually prevent coronavirus infection remains unknown and will be tested in Phase III trials.
It’s thought more than 10,000 people will be recruited for the Phase III trials, Bloomberg reports.
CNBG is said to be building factories that will allow it to manufacture more than 200million doses annually.
Estimates suggest the world will need around 4.5billion vaccine doses to put an end to the pandemic.
The virus is so hard to track – because many only get a mild illness – and spreads so easily that experts believe it will continue to spread through the human population indefinitely if a vaccine cannot be found.
It comes after AstraZeneca said it was already manufacturing an unproven vaccine with hopes of dishing out hundreds of millions of doses by September.
The Cambridge-based firm has started to mass-produce the experimental AZD1222 jab, developed by Oxford University, at factories in India, Oxford, Switzerland and Norway.
It expects to have distributed hundreds of millions of doses of the vaccine this year and at least 2billion by mid-2021.
AstraZeneca has signed deals to produce 400million doses for the US and 100million for the UK if it is successful in human trials. Results are expected in August.
Britain has agreed to pay for the doses ‘as early as possible’ – with ministers hoping for a third of those to be ready for September if proven effective.
Following an initial phase of testing on 160 healthy volunteers between 18 and 55, the study of AZD1222 has moved to phases two and three.
It will involve increasing the testing to up to 10,260 people and expanding the age range of volunteers to include children and the elderly.
Two-thousand of thee volunteers will be trialled in Brazil because of recruitment troubles in the UK, where the virus is slowly vanishing in the community.
AstraZeneca announced a deal last month with Oxford BioMedica to manufacture the Covid vaccine at its manufacturing centre in Oxford.
AstraZeneca will have access to the company’s 84,000-square-foot factory and will turn out most of the clinical and commercial supply of the vaccine this year.
It also announced a licensing deal with the Serum Institute of India to provide 1billion doses of the vaccine to low- and middle-income countries by 2021. The goal will be to manufacture 400 million doses in its factory by the end of 2020.
Last week the firm signed a deal with the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (Cepi) in Norway and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, in Switzerland.
The companies will help manufacture 300million globally accessible doses of the coronavirus vaccine this year.