Hong Kong: China’s military has approved a coronavirus vaccine, known as Ad5-nCoV, for use within its ranks that has been developed by its research unit and a biotech firm.
The vaccine was jointly developed by CanSino and the Beijing Institute of Biotechnology, part of the Academy of Military Medical Sciences.
On Monday, CanSino announced that China’s Central Military Commission had given the vaccine a “military specially-needed drug approval” on June 25, for one year.
China has repeatedly insisted that its military has remained unaffected by the pandemic, with officials claiming that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), has not recorded a single coronavirus case. However, US observers, have cast doubt on the claims, noting that the PLA is the among the world’s largest standing armies, making it statistically unlikely that its personnel have not been exposed to the virus.
It was not clear how widely it would be used within China’s enormous military forces, and the ministry of defence did not reply to an AFP request for further information.
According to a CanSino statement, clinical trials of the new vaccine have shown a “good safety profile” with initial results indicating that Ad5-nCoV had potential to prevent diseases caused by SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus strain that causes Covid-19.
CanSino had previously announced in May that the Canadian government was allowing human trials of the Ad5-nCoV vaccine. “This vaccine candidate holds great promise,” Iain Stewart, president of the National Research Council of Canada, said in a statement at the time.
According to medical journal The Lancet there have already been more than 1,000 clinical trials on dozens of pharmaceutical treatments for the virus but no totally effective medical intervention has been found.
