Story at a glance
- China launched emergency use of a potential vaccine on July 22.
- The health official said the government plans to scale up the program before the winter months.
- The country has gone eight days without reporting a locally transmitted case of coronavirus after being the initial epicenter of the pandemic.
China has been giving an experimental coronavirus vaccine candidate to groups of key workers since July, a senior Chinese health official announced Saturday.
Zheng Zhongwei, director of the National Health Commission’s science and technology development center, told state broadcaster CCTV over the weekend that the Chinese government authorized the emergency use of a vaccine on July 22.
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Health workers and border officials considered to be high-risk groups were chosen to be among the first to receive the vaccine as “most cases in China are imported,” the health official said. Workers at some state-owned firms who travel abroad have been given the experimental vaccine as well.
Zheng, who is also the head of China’s coronavirus vaccine development, did not specify which of China’s vaccines currently in the final phase of clinical trials was being used or if the program involved more than one vaccine candidate.
He also did not give details on how many workers received it, but emphasized the vaccine had been administered in line with the law and there had been no adverse side effects.
The “emergency” vaccine appears to be China’s first in use outside of clinical trials.
“We’ve drawn up a series of plan packages, including medical consent forms, side-effects monitoring plans, rescuing plans, compensation plans, to make sure the emergency use is well regulated and monitored,” Zheng said.
China is looking to scale up the testing of the vaccine to other groups before autumn and winter as a possible resurgence of infections is possible. The government plans to extend the emergency vaccinations to those who work in the transport and service industries and at wet markets to create an “immunity barrier.”
The country has gone eight days without reporting a locally transmitted case of coronavirus after being the initial epicenter of the pandemic. The virus is believed to have first emerged out of Wuhan, China, late last year.
China’s vaccine campaign, however, has made the rest of the world skeptical.
Last week, Papua New Guinea border officials refused entry to a planeload of Chinese mine workers because they had participated in vaccine trials.
State-owned Ramu NiCo reportedly vaccinated 48 of its workers with a potential coronavirus vaccine in August.
The workers were refused entry to the country over a “lack of information of what these trials are and what possible risks or threat that it might cause” to the country, Papua New Guinea’s police commissioner and pandemic controller said last week.
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