The chief executive officer (CEO) of Sinovac Biotech Ltd. said around 90 percent of its employees and their families joined the phase 3 trial of CoronaVac, the COVID-19 vaccine the company developed under China’s emergency use program.
“The extent of inoculations under the emergency program, which China launched in July but has released few details about, points to how actively it is using experimental vaccines in the hopes of protecting essential workers against a potential COVID-19 resurgence, even as trials are still underway,” One News reported.
The Sinovac program targets to include healthcare, food market, transportation, and service sector workers.
The CoronaVac is in Phase 3 clinical trials was administered to about 2,000 to 3,000 employees and their families. The vaccination was voluntarily, CEO Yin Weidong told Reuters.
“As a vaccine developer and manufacturer, a new outbreak could directly impact our vaccine production,” Yin said.
The CEO explained that those who received CoronaVac from Sinovac were informed of the potential side effects before the vaccine was administered. The participants also knew the vaccine is completing only early and mid-stage trials.
According to results of a mid-stage trial sponsored by Sinovac, the possible side effects of CoronaVac include fatigue, fever, and pain, with mostly mild symptoms. The study was participated by 600 participants and published last month ahead of peer review.
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CoronaVac of Sinovac trials in the Philippines
The Department of Health is looking at five hospitals that would participate in Phase 3 of the clinical trials of COVID-19 vaccines developed by China-based Sinovac Biotech, Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said.
These five hospitals include the Philippine General Hospital, San Lazaro Hospital, Manila Doctors Hospital, the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine, and Vicente Sotto Medical Center, Vergeire said.
“Nasa Phase 2 na ito (Sinovac), at iyong Phase 3 ginagawa na sa ibang bansa katulad ng Brazil,” Vergeire said in an online briefing.
(It is in Phase 2 (Sinovac), and Phase 3 is already being done in other countries like Brazil.)
The government is coordinating with 16 other vaccine manufacturers worldwide for COVID-19 access.