China plans to vaccinate people nationwide against the new coronavirus soon. The first batch of 50 million doses of the vaccine is scheduled to be completed before the arrival of the Spring Festival rush on Jan. 15 next year.
The news comes from a report in Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post on Friday (Dec. 18). The newspaper said the second batch of 50 million doses of the vaccine is scheduled to be completed by Feb. 5. Officials are preparing to distribute 100 million doses of the vaccine to all parts of the country.
The vaccine used this time is developed and produced by state-owned Sinopharm and privately owned Kexing Bio, and requires two injections per person at about two hundred yuan per dose.
The first 50 million doses of the vaccine will be prioritized for healthcare workers, police officers, airport and customs personnel, and public service workers, with the aim of reducing the risk of virus transmission during the busiest period of the Spring Festival.
The first day of Chinese New Year next year is on Feb. 12. The peak travel period for people should be Feb. 9 and 10.
Many provincial CDCs have already placed orders for the vaccine, and the general Chinese population is not expected to start getting vaccinated until after the New Year holiday, the South China Morning Post said. Sichuan province plans to vaccinate 200 people by the end of the year and to vaccinate high-risk priority groups early in the year.
As the time for mass vaccination approaches, concerns about the safety of vaccines in China are coming into sharper focus. So far, none of China’s five vaccines have completed Phase III trials and received approval from the national drug inspection authority.
A total of 11 vaccines worldwide are in Phase III human trials, five of which are from China. The vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech is currently approved for marketing in the United States and the United Kingdom. It is estimated that the EU will also approve it in the near future.
The vaccine developed by the U.S.-based Modena received support from a U.S. expert advisory panel on Thursday and is expected to receive FDA approval soon. A vaccine jointly developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca is also expected to be approved for marketing early next year.
An article published Thursday in the Financial Times said that some of the vaccines developed in China have entered human clinical trials without even releasing data from the first phase of animal trials. This could create diplomatic, political and economic risks if exported to the outside world.
None of the Chinese vaccines have received approval from the Chinese State Drug Administration, the article said. This means that the vaccine is legally questionable. In contrast, vaccines put into use in the United Kingdom, the United States and Germany have all completed the formal process to obtain legal approvals.
Recently it was reported that in Serbia, a division of the Tianjin Electric Power Construction Company had more than 400 employees, of whom about 300 were diagnosed with the virus, mainly Chinese workers. They were vaccinated with vaccines from China National Pharmaceutical Company before they left the country. There is more than one example of this type of thing. Similar things have happened one after another to Chinese workers sent to Uganda, Angola and other countries in Africa.
At a press conference on Friday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin, responding to a question about the vaccinations that China is about to launch, said he was not aware of the matter and asked reporters to ask the relevant authorities.
Wang Wenbin simply repeated the standard Chinese official answer, “On the issue of vaccines, China has always attached great importance to the safety and efficacy of vaccines, and Chinese vaccine research and development enterprises have been promoting vaccine research and development in strict accordance with the laws of scientific norms and regulatory requirements, in compliance with the law, and in strict compliance with international norms and relevant laws and regulations, and carrying out relevant international cooperation. “
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