A vaccine is our only hope of putting a halt to the deadly coronavirus that has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives. And while the chances of developing a vaccine against Sars-CoV-2 are grim, we can’t lose hope. A Chinese pharmaceutical giant, Sinopharm, has declared that its coronavirus vaccine candidate will be ready for commercial use by the end of December this year. The vaccine will be priced at $144.27 or Rs. 10,796 for two doses. In June, the Phase-III of human trials for two inactivated coronavirus vaccine candidates developed by Sinopharm in Beijing and Wuhan were moved to UAE.
The Chairman of Sinopharm, Liu Jingzhen, said that the company will start reviewing the marketing procedure for the vaccine once the Phase-III of human trials is completed overseas. Moreover, he said that the price of the vaccine will not be high when it’s released into the market. Liu stated, “It will not be priced very high. It is expected to cost a few hundred yuan for the shot, and for two shots it will be less than 1,000 yuan.” Further clinical trials for the Sinopharm vaccine candidates are being conducted in the UAE to test the efficacy of the vaccines. According to a leading news agency, the Global Times, Liu Jingzhen had himself been injected with two shots of one of the coronavirus vaccine candidates.
Another Chinese pharmaceutical giant, CanSino Biologics Inc has been granted China’s first invention patent for its COVID-19 vaccine candidate. The vaccine named Ad5-nCoV vaccine is a recombinant vaccine developed from the strain of an adenovirus. This original concept earned the company China’s first invention patent. According to WHO, there are approximately 200 coronavirus vaccine candidates which have registered for further testing. Scientists across the world are hustling day and night and churning out new ideas for vaccine development. Currently, the most promising vaccines in the world are being developed by Oxford University, Pfizer, Sinopharm, and Moderna.
Hopefully, the hard work of all the people involved in the coronavirus vaccine development will bear fruit and the world will rise above the pandemic. However, only time will tell if the leaders of the world will be able to put a halt to the pandemic or not.
