Covid-19 roundup: One Chinese biotech enters clinic, another eyes fall completion, a third shoots for 2021 — while the Warp Speed general remains Sino-skeptic
A week ago, the state-owned Chinese biotech Sinopharm reported in Cell that their inactive Covid-19 vaccine candidate led to high levels of neutralizing antibodies in rodents, rabbits and monkeys. Their vaccine was already in Phase I/II.
A senior executive for the company warned today, though, that it might take until at least 2021 to get that vaccine ready to scale, Reuters reported. The problem is that, save for the occasional flare, China has largely kept its Covid-19 outbreak under control. That makes it difficult to run a large pivotal trial, in which you would need a significantly larger number of patients on the placebo arm to get infected than those on the vaccine arm.
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