People are lining up for the experimental treatment despite the warnings from international public health experts
In the race to provide the country with a potentially life-saving coronavirus vaccine, one Chinese company is offering the vaccine to the public on a first-come-first-served basis. Those interested are encouraged to turn up and pay the money for the injection. There is just one caveat, the treatment still hasn’t passed the final Stage 3 clinical trials, according to a TIME magazine report.
Sinovac is one of 11 Chinese countries approved to carry out clinical trials of potential coronavirus vaccines.
Li Shurui, a 22-year-old business student decided to take the plunge as he attends college in the U.K.
“I haven’t had any problems from the jabs so far,” Li told the news outlet.
The two injections of CoronaVac produced by the company SinoVac (otherwise known as Beijing Kexing Bioproducts) cost $300 at the private Taihe Hospital in the Chinese capital.
However, the CoronaVac available in China is not the only vaccine rollout that is gaining momentum. In September, the publication reported that state-owned SinoPharm revealed that hundreds of thousands of Chinese had already taken its experimental COVID-19 vaccines as part of a state initiative to protect frontline health workers and officials from traveling to high-risk nations, reported the publication.
"This is insane,” Adam Kamradt-Scott, an associate professor specializing in global health security at the University of Sydney, told TIME regarding China’s vaccine rollout. “It is just unsound public health practice.”
Since December, the coronavirus has spread throughout the world and case numbers continue to rise. Authorities in 215 countries and territories have reported over 41 million Covid‑19 cases and 1.1 million deaths since China reported its first cases to the World Health Organization (WHO) in December, CNN reported.
The United States still leads as the country with the highest number of cases — over 8 million according to data from the John Hopkins University Center for Systems and Engineering.
President Trump has put public pressure on regulators and pharmaceutical companies to make a vaccine available in time for the election. In mid-October, Pfizer disclosed that they may have a vaccine for emergency use in the U.S. by late November. Moderna is on the same timeline but cautions widespread vaccine distribution may not happen until the spring, the news magazine reported.
In China, the virus has reportedly been largely contained. The country reported only 14 cases on Wednesday, all imported, reported the news outlet.
In August, Russian President Vladimir Putin unveiled their COVID-19 vaccine — named Sputnik 5, after the Soviet Satellite. It was reported that he had already administered the vaccine to his daughter. However, the publication points out that it had only been tested on only 76 people — 38 in Phase I and 38 in Phase II trials — and it, too, hadn't entered Phase 3 trials.
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