Coronavirus: 1 million Chinese injected with Sinopharm vaccine under emergency use scheme
- ‘There has not been a single case of a serious adverse event,’ chairman of state-owned company says
- Authorities in Zhejiang say members of the public have also been given a Covid-19 vaccine developed by private firm Sinovac Biotec
Almost 1 million Chinese have been given an experimental Covid-19 vaccine developed by the state-owned Sinopharm under the government’s emergency use scheme, the company’s chairman said.
China is one of just two countries, along with Russia, known to have used so-called vaccine candidates – products that are still undergoing clinical trials to test their efficacy and safety – to inoculate its citizens.
“In terms of emergency use, the vaccines were applied to nearly a million people and there has not been a single case of a serious adverse event. People have had only mild symptoms,” Liu Jingzhen, chairman of China National Pharmaceutical Group (Sinopharm), said in an interview with a Sichuan-based digital media company that was published on Wednesday.
“Until now, all our progress, from research to clinical trials to production and emergency use, we have been leading the world,” he said.
Besides the recipients of the Sinopharm jabs, authorities in Zhejiang said they had made a Covid-19 vaccine developed by the privately owned pharmaceutical company Sinovac Biotec available to high-risk groups in the east China province under the emergency use scheme.