1.4b people lead China’s victory over COVID-19

Award ceremony injects confidence in road to rejuvenation

Schools reopen; domestic travel reaches pre-pandemic level; the government sums up experience in the virus fight and rewards those who fought the virus… emerging signs suggest that COVID-19 is ending in China, spawning a question of who was behind the country’s victory against coronavirus. The answer: its 1.4 billion people.

From Wuhan to Beijing, Dalian to Urumqi, China has managed to stop the viral spread in the fastest speed to ensure people’s health; from city-wide lockdowns to precise prevention strategies, the central government has found ways to minimally disrupt people’s lives while fighting the virus; from winter to summer; the Chinese people, be they government officials who orchestrated plans in response to the virus, to frontline doctors, ordinary people, have fought like great warriors and contributed their share to this arduous battle. They are, as the government hailed, the “formidable force” fighting coronavirus.

All outstanding representatives from those fields who fought bravely in the country’s battle against the COVID-19 epidemic will be honored at a ceremony on Tuesday. During the event, President Xi Jinping is expected to confer the Medal of the Republic (China’s highest state honor) and other honorary titles to those who made outstanding contributions to the fight.

Senior Chinese

jointly developed by the team and Chinese biotech company CanSino Biologics Inc.

Tao Lina, a Shanghai-based immunological expert, estimated that Ad5-nCoV would probably be priced at 100 yuan ($14.64) per dose due to the lesser cost of the adenovirus vector vaccine compared to inactivated vaccines.

Some Chinese analysts also predicted that the price would not be too much higher than that of other respiratory infection vaccines – for example, the price of flu vaccines is roughly between 50-150 yuan in China – given the advantages of China’s economic system as well as governmental support for major public health emergencies.

It is also possible that the vaccine would be offered to the public for free if there is another sudden outbreak in the country, analysts said.

Another Chinese vaccine producer the China National Biotec Group (CNBG), a Sinopharm unit, announced previously that two inactivated COVID-19 vaccines they produced would probably come onto the market by the end of December at a price of less than 1,000 yuan for two doses.

According to US media, the US federal government previously reached a deal with Pfizer and BioNTech to buy 100 million doses of their experimental vaccine candidate with $1.95 billion.

Ad5-nCoV was delivered into phase one clinical trials on March 16, making it the world’s first COVID-19 candidate vaccine that entered clinical trials.

As the epidemic in China has been contained, domestic vaccine producers have been seeking international clinical trials to more effectively test their products’ safety and efficacy, including CanSino.

International phase three clinical trials on Ad5-nCoV have kicked off in Russia and Pakistan, China Central Television reported on Monday.

In total, 40,000 adult volunteers around the globe will participate in the vaccine’s phase three clinical trials, CanSino previously told the Global Times.

“It is possible to produce 300 million doses per year as far as I can see. After the phase three results come out, we will catch up to prepare for mass vaccination at anytime,” Chen noted.

CNBG and a third Chinese vaccine producer Sinovac Biotech Ltd had also announced that they could each produce 300 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines per year.

Effective against mutations

It has been six months since the first injection of Ad5-nCoV in March and the vaccine still remains effective as of now, according to Chen.

She estimated that the period of effectiveness of the vaccine would be as long as that of Ebola vaccines.

The efficacy of a first dose of Ebola vaccine normally starts to wane six months after injection. If a second dose is injected at this time, the efficacy would last two years, according to Chen.

In response to increasing reports of mutations in the novel coronavirus, casting doubts upon the efficacy of existing vaccine candidates, Chen tried to ease public concerns saying that Ad5-nCoV can remain effective in fighting against all existing mutations of the coronavirus.

Current data shows a very low rate of mutations in the piece of viral DNA that we use in the vaccine.

Even if a mutation happens, we can rapidly improve the vaccine based on its current design to adapt to the mutation, Chen explained.

She noted that this is the advantage of gene engineering vaccines and the reason why so many countries are exploiting the technology.

The vaccine can be made into different valents to include more strains of the virus, just like the human papillomavirus vaccines that have 2-valent, 4-valent and nine-valent types, Tao explained.