BEIJING – China’s drug regulator has approved the country’s first mixed-vaccine trial, said a company involved in the study, as the rapid spread of the Delta Covid-19 variant raises concerns about the efficacy of domestically produced jabs.
The trial will test the efficacy of combining an “inactivated” vaccine made by China’s Sinovac with a DNA-based one developed by United States pharmaceutical company Inovio, said a statement issued yesterday.
The statement was put out by Advaccine Biopharmaceuticals Suzhou, Inovio’s trial partner in China.
Preclinical work has found that “two different vaccine applications... produce an even stronger and more balanced immune response”, said Advaccine chairman Wang Bin in the statement.
There are several types of Covid-19 vaccines, including those using an inactivated or weakened virus to generate an immune response, and more cutting-edge RNA- or DNA-based jabs that use engineered versions of the coronavirus’ genetic code to create a protein that safely prompts an immune response.
Five of the seven vaccines approved in China are two-shot inactivated jabs.
Their published efficacy lags behind RNA jabs by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, which have pre-Delta success rates of above 90%.
The World Health Organisation has said there is still not enough data to say whether using two different vaccines together is safe or can boost immunity.
Inovio has not published any efficacy data from its global clinical trials. It is the first DNA-based vaccine to be trialled in China.
The country is battling its worst Covid-19 outbreak in months, with officials saying many of those infected have already been vaccinated.
This has added to calls for China’s two biggest vaccine producers – the state-run Sinopharm and privately owned Sinovac – to provide data proving their jabs work against Delta.
Beijing has yet to approve foreign vaccines for domestic use. – AFP, August 11, 2021
