It was US’ Seattle where, mRNA-1273, the first potential Coronavirus vaccine trial started and soon after that China, the initial epicentre of COVID-19, said ‘OK’ to the human trial of a homemade vaccine to cure the Novel Coronavirus, which has killed over 42,000 people and infected more than 859,000 individuals globally.
But now as per a Chinese researcher, Beijing wants to carry out additional vaccine trials in other countries which are seriously hit by Coronavirus pandemic, if the ongoing trial in Wuhan proves it is safe and effective.
It should be noted that on March 16 China’s first stage of the human trial started in Wuhan, where the virus emerged in December 2019. Chen Wei, a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering said that the trial process has been running smoothly and the findings will be published in April. As per Chen, beyond Chinese people, the potential Coronavirus vaccine will also be tried on foreigners based in China.
The capital of Hubei province, Wuhan, bore the brunt of the COVID-19 outbreak for more than two months. After months of struggle, when China lifted the lockdown measures from the region, the city of 11 million is returning to normal as the virus cases abated in recent days.
As per the state-run China Daily, Chen, is also a researcher at the Academy of Military Sciences, said, “If the initial results prove the vaccine is safe and produces (desired) effects, we will continue to test its effectiveness overseas through international cooperation if the global epidemic continues to spread.” As per the researcher, though this way other majorly affected countries would be able to control the pandemic in respective regions.
Chen said that many other countries have shown interest in this vaccine from China. Chen and her team members would like to cooperate with their international counterparts in the development of vaccines for the highly infectious disease, such as COVID-19. But before starting a trial in other countries, Chen said that domestic trials would take place involving foreigners who are living in China.
While thousands of people are asking “When a vaccine will be ready,” it should be mentioned that when the scientists will find an accurate vaccine and when it will be approved to treat Coronavirus patients is still unknown. Before the commercial use, a vaccine must be proved safe and effective first.
Vaccine trial
Since the outbreak already claimed thousands of lives mostly in countries like Italy, Spain and France, several many other Chinese institutes are now stepping up efforts to develop vaccines for COVID-19. The Asian country, which has been criticized for hiding facts about the Coronavirus cases in the region, has stepped up the process to finalise vaccines to counter COVID-19 after Kaiser Permanente research facility in Seattle and Washington started human trials.
While there is no approved drug or vaccine against the Novel Coronavirus, China started the first phase of the vaccine trial in Wuhan with an aim to evaluate the safety and tolerance for the vaccine in healthy adults aged between 18 and 60 years. Reports revealed that as of now over 100 volunteers have completed inoculation and currently under the medical observation.
As of now, China has reported 82,301 Coronavirus cases, while the National Health Commission said on Wednesday that the country had 36 new cases on Tuesday, March 31.
