China displays COVID-19 vaccines at Beijing trade fair

Beijing, Sep 07: As novel coronavirus cases flare up to 2.7 crore worldwide putting millions of lives at stake, China has put its indigenous coronavirus vaccines on display for the first time at a Beijing trade fair this week.

Produced by Chinese companies Sinovac Biotech and Sinopharm, the vaccine is yet to hit the market but the makers of the vaccine believe it will be approved after all-important phase 3 trials as early as year-end.

A Sinovac representative told AFP his firm has already "completed the construction of a vaccine factory" able to produce 300 million doses a year.

Sinovac's development of a vaccine against COVID-19 began in January 2020 in partnership with leading academic research institutes in China.

The company received approval from China's NMPA on April 13 to conduct phase I/II trials on its inactivated vaccine candidate against COVID-19 in China.

There are currently more than two dozen research efforts underway to develop protective vaccines against the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19.

In May, Moderna, a Cambridge, Mass.-based biotech firm, announced early and encouraging immune-response results for its experimental COVID-19 vaccine.