BEIJING: From offering the world’s first inhaled COVID-19 vaccines and developing Omicron-targeted vaccines to rolling out second booster shots and targeted immunization plans for seniors, China’s vaccination efforts have gained steam this year, according to authorities.
The country started 2022 with a strong arsenal to fight COVID-19, with seven domestically developed vaccines available. Two of the vaccines were deployed globally after gaining approval for use from the World Health Organization.
Chinese researchers also raced to provide a wider variety of vaccines, including doses administered through the mouth or nose, to keep up with new mutations of the novel coronavirus.
“Recently, China granted conditional approval to five COVID-19 vaccines and emergency use authorization to eight vaccines,” Huang Guo, deputy director of the National Medical Products Administration, said at a news briefing on Dec 20.
Li Bin, vice-minister of the National Health Commission, said that China has maintained a steady pace in updating its COVID-19 policy.
“We have advanced vaccination and booster shot campaigns, developed and approved a number of vaccines and provided different combinations,” he said.
On Sept 4, China became the first country to grant emergency-use approval to an inhalable COVID-19 vaccine made by CanSino Biologics based in Tianjin. The vaccine can only be used as a booster.
The vaccine delivers a dose through a puff of air from a nebulizer and is inhaled through the mouth.
Sunney Xie Xiaoliang, a biophysical chemist at Peking University and an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said that by stimulating immune responses in the nasal cavity where respiratory pathogens first enter, inhaled or nasal spray vaccines are showing promise in fending off infections. “Using it as a booster shot can also trigger higher levels of humoral immunity as well as cellular immunity, which are potentially capable of clearing the virus within a shorter period,” he added.
–The Daily Mail-China Daily news exchange item
