Bangladesh allows late-stage trial of China's Sinovac COVID-19 vaccine

Sinovac has been looking for volunteers outside of China as the number of coronavirus cases there has dwindled, said a member of Bangladesh's national technical advisory committee to tackle COVID-19.

Reuters

July 20, 2020 / 13:54 IST

Bangladesh has approved the third-phase trial of a potential COVID-19 vaccine developed by China's Sinovac Biotech Ltd, officials said on Monday, as infections continue to rise in the densely-populated South Asian country.

Sinovac has been looking for volunteers outside of China as the number of coronavirus cases there has dwindled, said a member of Bangladesh's national technical advisory committee to tackle COVID-19.

The International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (ICDDR,B), will conduct the trial that could begin next month.

"We have given ethical permission for the trial after reviewing the research protocol," Mahmood Uz Jahan, director of the Bangladesh Medical Research Council (BMRC), told Reuters.

"The protocol given to BMRC by ICDDR,B will be applied to 4,200 volunteers. Half of them will get vaccinated."

COVID-19 Vaccine

Frequently Asked Questions

How does a vaccine work?

A vaccine works by mimicking a natural infection. A vaccine not only induces immune response to protect people from any future COVID-19 infection, but also helps quickly build herd immunity to put an end to the pandemic. Herd immunity occurs when a sufficient percentage of a population becomes immune to a disease, making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. The good news is that SARS-CoV-2 virus has been fairly stable, which increases the viability of a vaccine.

How many types of vaccines are there?

There are broadly four types of vaccine — one, a vaccine based on the whole virus (this could be either inactivated, or an attenuated [weakened] virus vaccine); two, a non-replicating viral vector vaccine that uses a benign virus as vector that carries the antigen of SARS-CoV; three, nucleic-acid vaccines that have genetic material like DNA and RNA of antigens like spike protein given to a person, helping human cells decode genetic material and produce the vaccine; and four, protein subunit vaccine wherein the recombinant proteins of SARS-COV-2 along with an adjuvant (booster) is given as a vaccine.

What does it take to develop a vaccine of this kind?

Vaccine development is a long, complex process. Unlike drugs that are given to people with a diseased, vaccines are given to healthy people and also vulnerable sections such as children, pregnant women and the elderly. So rigorous tests are compulsory. History says that the fastest time it took to develop a vaccine is five years, but it usually takes double or sometimes triple that time.

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