Coronavirus: new Chinese vaccines on the way, but so are more waves of Covid, experts say

Name: World Health Organization announces Covid-19 is no longer a global health emergency
Uploaded: 2023-05-22T11:00:24.000Z
Duration: 2 min 50 s
Description: World Health Organization announces Covid-19 is no longer a global health emergency

Health authorities are preparing to roll out new line-up of home-grown vaccines to battle Omicron subvariants

China urged to brace for a possible second wave of Covid infections next winter, disease expert says

Reading Time:2 minutes

Why you can trust SCMP

As immunity wanes in China, public health experts are promising new vaccines to better target persistent Omicron subvariants. Photo: AFP

Vanessa Caiin Shanghai

Published: 7:00pm, 22 May 2023Updated: 8:33pm, 22 May 2023

China will soon have two new vaccines to target the most dominant strains of Covid-19 in the country, according to Zhong Nanshan, one of the nation’s top respiratory disease experts.

Zhong told the Greater Bay Area Science Forum in Guangzhou on Monday that the vaccines targeting Omicron subvariants had received preliminary approval and were expected to be available soon.

As many as four other new vaccines were also expected to be approved soon, but he did not give further details about them or when they would be launched.

02:50

World Health Organization announces Covid-19 is no longer a global health emergency

It was important to develop vaccines that offered better protection against highly infectious XBB strains, Zhong said, adding that “researching more effective vaccines is something we can be ahead of internationally”.

A World Health Organization advisory group has recommended that this year’s Covid-19 booster shots be updated to target XBB strains, according to a statement on Thursday.

XBB has recently fuelled a surge Covid-19 cases in China, with the proportion of those cases rising from 74.4 per cent in late April to 83.6 per cent in early May, according to the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

29:55

China’s Covid crisis: What went wrong and how bad is it? | Talking Post with Yonden Lhatoo

The CDC confirmed the country’s first case of the XBB.1.5 subvariant in February. As of late April, 57 cases of XBB. 1.16 and its subvariants had been detected among local infections.