China’s National Health Commission has confirmed that the country has approved two potential Covid-19 vaccines for human trials.
The early-stage human tests for two experimental coronavirus vaccines come at a time when China battles to contain imported cases of Covid-19 and prevent a second wave of deadly virus.
According to Xinhua news agency, the vaccines are being developed by a Beijing based unit of Sinovac Biotech and by the Wuhan Institute of Biological products, which is an affiliate of the state owned China National Pharmaceutical Group.
This would the third anti-Covid-19 vaccine produced in China which has been approved for clinical trials, with the first being a coronavirus vaccine candidate developed by the military-backed Academy of Military Medical Sciences and biotech firm CanSino Bio.
Apart from this, US drug developer Moderna has also begun human tests for their vaccine with the US National Institutes of Health.
The four potential vaccines ignite hope that that the world will soon return to normalcy. So far, 1,939,463 people have been reported to have tested positive for the coronavirus and 120,879 people have died. A total of 459,525 have recovered from the virus as well.
