China health official says China has officially launched emergency use of COVID19 vaccines

Coronavirus weekend news – Chinese media, Global Times, reports via Twitter that an official at the country’s National Health Commission:

  • says China has officially launched emergency use of a vaccine
  • the vaccine has been in clinical trial since July 22
GT also report on a more than 20,000 person phase III clinical trial in the UAE of Sinopharm’s COVID19 vaccine
  • has shown a high level of safety
  • efficacy is currently under observation
Coronavirus weekend news - Chinese media, Global Times, reports via Twitter that an official at the country's National Health Commission:
Both of the GT items are tweets only, not accompanied by further articles for more information.
There is one more that is accompanied by an article – saying that China’s first recombinant protein COVID-19 vaccine made from insect cells has been approved for clinical trials by the National Medical Products Administration.
  • vaccine is being developed by the State Key Laboratory of Biological Therapy of Sichuan University affiliated West China Hospital
  • vaccine uses insect cells to multiply in the culture medium and introduces the gene of COVID-19 into insect cells, which means the cell can be used as a factory to produce high-quality recombinant vaccine proteins and purify them for refinement.
  • vaccine was tested on monkeys and other animals, and was found to have a good protective effect against COVID-19 infection, with no obvious side effects
Given the history of how markets view vaccine news (generally positively) this threefer from the GT might be a boost for sentiment on Monday. There is still plenty of time left over the weekend for less than favourable stories to develop, stay tuned.