China committed to global cooperation in coronavirus vaccine trials: Minister

BEJING: Chinese Science and Technology Minister, Wang Zhigang has said China will strengthen international cooperation in future coronavirus clinical vaccine trials, building on earlier collaboration in vaccine development.

Wang Zhigang during a press conference in Beijing said developing “a vaccine is still the fundamental strategy in our effort to overcome the new COVID-19.”

However, vaccine development is very difficult and takes time, he added, when asked how China would initially prioritize shots by country when a vaccine is found.

Wang further said the rigor of vaccine development has been compared by some scientists to a dance involving precise measures and practices.

Earlier, at the World Health Assembly, President Xi Jinping vowed that vaccines China’s develops will become a “worldwide public good” once they are ready for use, and it will be China’s contribution to ensuring vaccine accessibility and affordability in developing countries.

On May 19, it had claimed that a Chinese laboratory had been developing a new drug it believes has the power to bring the coronavirus pandemic to a halt without the need for a vaccine.

A drug being tested by scientists at China’s renowned Peking University could not only shorten the recovery time for those infected but even offer short-term immunity from the virus, researchers had said.

Sunney Xie, director of the university’s Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Genomics, told an international news agency that the drug had been successful at the animal testing stage.

“When we injected neutralizing antibodies into infected mice, after five days the viral load was reduced by a factor of 2,500,” said Xie, adding that it means the potential drug has a therapeutic effect.

The drug uses neutralizing antibodies – produced by the human immune system to prevent the virus infecting cells – which Xie’s team isolated from the blood of sixty recovered patients.

A study on the team’s research, published in the scientific journal Cell, suggests that using the antibodies provides a potential cure for the disease and shortens recovery time. Xie said his team had been working tirelessly searching for the antibody.

According to the data compiled by the World Health Organisation (WHO), China is expending great efforts in the global scramble to develop a vaccine for the COVID-19 outbreak that started in its Wuhan.

WHO report said Chinese researchers are conducting five separate clinical trials on humans or half of all such trials globally.

However, United States President Donald Trump’s administration has accused China of cover-ups and lack of transparency regarding the plague.

China has repeatedly denied the allegations, saying it has been keeping the world informed from the start.