US coronavirus vaccine trials raise hopes Chinese drugs will also prove effective, says pharma chief
- CanSino’s co-founder Zhu Tao says the positive results reported by Moderna and Pfizer suggest it would ‘not be difficult’ to reach high efficacy rates
- Chinese drugs may not reach the 90-plus per cent level of the US products, but they would still be ‘successful’ if they hit 70 or 80 per cent
Two successful US vaccine trials suggest there is a strong possibility that their Chinese counterparts will also prove effective, according to the co-founder of a Chinese drug company.
“The high efficacy [as a result of] their levels of neutralising antibodies indicates it is not difficult to reach high efficacy.
“It is not difficult for the vaccines developed by Chinese companies … to reach efficacy of 70 or 80 per cent,” said Zhu Tao, co-founder and chief science officer of Chinese vaccine developer CanSino Biologics in an interview on Saturday.
“It looks very promising that all the vaccines we are developing can achieve clinical success.”
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However, Zhu said it did not necessarily mean all vaccines could achieve an efficacy rate of 90 per cent or more, but they would still be “successful” if they reached the levels required by the country’s regulator.