Chinese firm finds hostility and smears add hurdles to Covid-19 vaccine race
- Executive from China National Biotec Group, one of the companies aiming to develop the first approved vaccine, says it has been tough to take risks and withstand US attacks
- Some collaboration is happening between companies, but for governments the battle for influence threatens to override calls to cooperate
But getting vaccines – if approved – to people clamouring for them around the world has hurdles to overcome, due in part to fragile relations between China and Western countries, most of all the US.
Chinese pharmaceutical companies are enjoying unprecedented involvement in the global race to find Covid-19 vaccines – four of the 10 candidates in the final stage of human trials were developed by Chinese firms, rubbing shoulders with Western giants AstraZeneca, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson – and huge sums are on the line.
With China no longer having enough local transmissions to stage trials itself, state-owned CNBG is conducting phase 3 trials involving more than 40,000 volunteers in about 10 countries in Asia, South America and Middle East, at a cost of thousands of US dollars per volunteer. Another Chinese company staging human trials overseas has forecast that it would cost US$1 billion in total.