CHINA PREPARES LARGE-SCALE ROLLOUT OF COVID-19

Sun 06 December 2020:

Provincial governments across China are placing orders for experimental, domestically made vaccines, though health officials have yet to say how well they work or how they may reach the country’s 1.4 billion people.

Developers are speeding up final testing, the Chinese foreign minister said Thursday during a UN meeting, as Britain issued approval for emergency use of Pfizer Inc.’s vaccine candidate and providers scrambled to set up distribution.

China’s fledgling pharmaceutical industry has at least five vaccines from four producers being tested in more than a dozen countries including Russia, Egypt and Mexico.

Health experts say even if they are successful, the certification process for the United States, Europe, Japan and other developed countries might be too complex for them to be used there.

However, China said it will ensure the products are affordable for developing countries.

One developer, China National Pharmaceutical Group, known as Sinopharm, said in November it applied for final market approval for use of its vaccine in China.

Others have been approved for emergency use on health workers and other people deem ed at high risk of infection.

More than 1 million people in China have received experimental vaccines under emergency use approval. Health experts question why China is using them on such a vast scale now that the outbreak is largely under control within its borders.

Health officials previously said China will be able to manufacture 610 million doses by the end of this year and ramp up to 1 billion doses next year.

Mainland China reported 18 new virus cases on December 5, up from 17 cases from a day earlier, the country’s national health authority said.

The National Health Commission said in a statement that 17 of the new cases were imported infections.

The number of new asymptomatic cases, which China does not classify as confirmed cases, fell to two from 12 a day earlier.

The number of confirmed cases in Mainland China stands at 86,619. The death toll remained unchanged at 4,634.

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