China to vaccinate ‘key teams’ over winter, spring: official By Reuters

BEIJING (Reuters) – China will focus first on vaccinating high-risk teams over the winter and spring earlier than widening the inoculation to most of the people, a senior well being official mentioned on Saturday.

Zeng Yixin, vice minister of China’s National Health Commission (NHC) and director of State Council’s vaccine R&D working group, warned that China’s COVID-19 prevention efforts have been underneath growing stress as temperatures fall.

“During the winter and spring seasons, carrying out novel coronavirus vaccination work among some key population groups is of great significance to epidemic prevention,” he informed a briefing.

China goals to actively construct group immunity, and the vaccination of high-risk teams – which embody employees within the chilly chain business, customs, healthcare, markets and public transport – is simply the primary a part of a “step-by-step programme”, he added.

China has included two candidate vaccines from Sinopharm and one from Sinovac Biotech Ltd in an emergency-use programme launched in July, focusing on particular high-infection threat teams corresponding to medical employees and border inspectors.

It has additionally authorised a vaccine from CanSino Biologics Inc for army use however has not authorised any vaccine to be used among the many normal public.

Zheng Zhongwei, the NHC official heading China’s COVID-19 vaccine improvement crew, mentioned China had administered greater than 1 million emergency doses to members of high-risk teams since July and “no serious adverse reactions” have been detected up to now.

“For the vaccines where we are moving quite fast, the number of cases required for the interim stage of Phase III clinical trials have already been obtained,” Zheng mentioned, although he did not specify which merchandise.

Data has been submitted to the medical merchandise regulator, which is able to approve the vaccines in the event that they meet the required situations, he added.