Coronavirus vaccine

Chinese state media is championing Sinovac’s new vaccine, focussing largely on the positives while minimizing the fact that the public release of its efficacy data has raised international eyebrows. Various regulators worldwide said they would take a close look at the data for Sinovac Biotech’s CoronaVac product, which the company’s Brazilian partner, the Butantan Institute, said on Tuesday had a roughly 50% general efficacy rate – well below the 78% reported earlier. But there was little mention in Chinese media on Thursday of the questions raised by the results. “Sinovac releases vaccine data in Brazil: 100% effective in preventing severe cases, could reduce hospitalization by 80%,” natio

A Chinese coronavirus vaccine has been found to have a lower efficacy rate than previously publicized, and now regulators around the world are expected to closely scrutinize the vaccine before approving it for their countries. The 50% efficacy rate is lower than the 78% number that was released by Brazil’s Butantan Institute on January 7, 2021. A series of confusing releases prompted calls from the scientific community for transparency in releasing coronavirus vaccine data. On Wednesday, Sinovac Biotech chairman Yin Weidong insisted that the data showed the vaccine, called CoronaVac, was safe and effective. He pointed out that the Brazilian study included people with “very mild symptoms” an

A Chinese  Covid-19 vaccine developer whose product has been approved for general use on adults seeks to expand its use to children as young as three years old. The company, China National Biotec Group (CNBG), is testing how well the vaccine could induce an immune response among minors, according to a radio appearance from Zhang Yuntao, vice-president of the company. The vaccine was approved last month to be used on adults under the age of 60 after an interim analysis found it offered 79% efficacy in its phase 3 trial, conducted on the same age group.  It has also been approved for emergency or general use in several other countries, including Egypt, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates. Vac

Chinese citizens are the most willing to get the Covid-19 vaccine while many in France, the US, and Russia refuse to be vaccinated, a poll has suggested. The World Economic Forum survey found 80% of Chinese participants said they were likely or certain to take the vaccine. In France, more than half of the respondents said they would refuse the Covid vaccine. 38% of Americans would agree to be vaccinated, a figure that is 9% higher than it was in October. Experts say it is an optimistic sign for the US, and cited separate polls showing attitudes among American adults had greatly shifted. In polls by the Pew Research Center and Gallup, the number of people who would take the vaccine had incre

The race for a Covid-19 vaccine has taken on critical importance as the disease continues to charge through the global population, with almost 15 million confirmed cases and nearly 615,000 deaths. The world hopes a vaccine can be a silver bullet out of the crisis, and new results from some of the teams leading development are showing early promising signs. But the real test lies ahead in the final-phase trials, experts say. The new data out on Monday includes a vaccine candidate produced by a team at Oxford University, working in partnership with British firm AstraZeneca. The candidate was safe and induced strong immune responses in combined phase-one and phase-two trials, according to a st

The future remains foggy as the coronavirus pandemic charges into the second half of the year, with more than 1 million new infections reported in the past week. But one thing is clear: there is no easy way out. Infectious disease experts can only theorize about what trajectory the virus will take in the coming months and whether it will embed itself permanently in the population and circulate every year. But they generally agree that the future will depend on how governments and people behave. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organisation, said on Monday that things would only get “worse and worse and worse” if countries and people did not take the necessary