Chinese Firm Promises COVID Vaccine By Early 2021 & They're Planning To Distribute It Worldwide

A Chinese pharmaceutical company has said that the coronavirus vaccine it is developing should be ready by early 2021 for distribution worldwide, including the United States.

Yin Weidong, Chief Executive Officer of Chinese vaccine developer Sinovac Biotech Ltd., has promised to apply to the U.S administration to sell the vaccine in United States if it passes its third and final round of testing on humans. Yin has said that he personally has been given the experimental vaccine.

ag.agafp

This comes after Sinovac Biotech Ltd. said that countries running its final-stage clinical trials like Brazil, Indonesia and Turkey will get its coronavirus shots at the same time as China, underscoring how vaccine supply agreements could cement diplomatic ties in the COVID-19 era.

Is China trustworthy?

It is uncertain if China's promises can be taken seriously as it supplied faulty PPE kits and masks to several countries. In March, thousands of testing kits and medical masks were below standard or defected, and therefore, rejected by the authorities in Spain, Turkey and the Netherlands. During the same time, the Dutch health ministry had recalled 6,00,000 face masks purchased from China. As per sources in the Union Health and Family Welfare Ministry, in April, around 63,000 Chinese-manufactured PPE kits did not meet the Indian standard criteria.?

REUTERS

Surge in cases linked to port workers

Meanwhile, China detected its first local asymptomatic infections in more than a month as two port workers responsible for unloading frozen seafood tested positive, adding to alarm that contaminated imports could be transmitting the coronavirus. The two cases, found in Shandong province's Qingdao city during routine testing of port workers, were the first symptom-free infections that China has reported since Aug. 20. China hasn't reported any local symptomatic infections since Aug. 15 either.

Earlier, in August, two cities in China had found traces of coronavirus in frozen food and on food packaging imported from Brazil, raising fears that contaminated food shipments might cause new outbreaks.