State Council's inter-agency task force briefing on COVID-19 vaccine
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E-mail China.org.cn, January 3, 2021
Bloomberg:
I have some questions about the vaccine data. Can you share with us more information on CNBG's vaccine efficacy data? In addition, when will the efficacy data of other vaccines be released? If the data is released later than foreign countries, will that mean China's vaccines have fallen behind? In addition, how can CNBG ensure that its production can meet both domestic and foreign demand? Thank you.
Wu Yonglin:
Thank you for your attention and concern for vaccines of the CNBG, affiliated with Sinopharm. We have conducted large-scale phase III clinical trials in the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and other countries, involving 60,000 volunteers of 125 nationalities. We have completed phased assessment of the protection rate and the results have exceeded the clinical research goals. The safety and efficacy exceeded the standards set by the WHO. They meet the requirements of China's conditional approval plan and can help establish effective immunity in a wide range of public groups. Therefore, on Dec. 9 and 13, the UAE and Bahrain respectively reviewed and approved the official registration of the CNBG's inactivated vaccine and put it on the market in accordance with the relevant technical standards of the WHO. Yesterday, China also granted conditional marketing authorization for the vaccine.
The detailed data will be announced later, and will also be published in Chinese and foreign medical journals. Please pay attention to the release. Thank you.
CGTN:
Media reports say that the COVID-19 virus is mutating. Will the virus variants affect the vaccine's effectiveness? Will the vaccine that has been granted conditional marketing approval work against the virus variants? Thank you.
Xu Nanping:
This is a very important question. The mutation of the COVID-19 virus is a problem that many are concerned about. It is also an important subject that our research and development team has focused on. We established a special research team at the very beginning of our research to study mutations of the virus. Currently, we have a database of nearly 300,000 COVID-19 genomic sequence data at the China National Center for Bioinformation and we have kept a close eye on the virus' daily variations which are now within a normal range on the whole. The effectiveness of the vaccine on the virus variants is something that we're very concerned about, especially after the media reported that a new COVID-19 variant detected in the U.K. remarkably improved the virus' transmissibility. Given this, together with our previous research, experts from the research and development team have further studied the effects that the virus variants may have on the effectiveness of the vaccines. The results showed that there is currently no evidence to prove that existing genetic mutations in the novel coronavirus will have a substantial effect on the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines.
However, we must be vigilant about this issue. The long-term spread of the virus may cause some variants to accumulate, so in this regard, our research and development team has adopted the principle that "it is always better to be prepared than not." The mutations having no effect on vaccines now does not rule out the possibility that they may have an effect in the future. Therefore, we have posed this outcome as an absolute certainty and planned our research accordingly. This is the basic principle of our work. We have already made certain plans and several expert groups have been engaging in studies on certain tasks such as virus variation, detection reagents, drug development, and vaccine effectiveness. Please trust science and the scientists. We have the confidence to address the effects that virus variants may have on the efficacy of vaccines. We will ensure the supply of safe, effective, and accessible vaccines to the people. Thank you.
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