China's "hundreds of thousands" of vaccinated: diplomats, miners, flight attendants, Huawei employees ...

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• LUCAS DE LA CAL

  @Lucasdelacal

  Beijing

Thursday, 10 September 2020 - 15:58

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After working as a nurse in Noah's Arks, the makeshift hospitals that were built in Wuhan to shelter mild Covid-19 patients, the young Jin Guanping was

.

It was on March 20, also in Wuhan.

Two days earlier, general and epidemiologist Chen Wei, who leads the team of researchers at the Institute of Biotechnology of the Chinese Academy of Military Medical Sciences, announced that they had successfully developed a vaccine and that clinical trials in humans were to begin.

Jin was one of 108 people recruited for the first phase of the trials.

"My body temperature is 36.2. Except for the redness and itching in the area of ​​inoculation,

" Jin wrote in an online diary that he made from a hotel converted into a test room where the volunteers were monitored 24 hours.

There was also Ren Chao, who works in the Security department of Wuhan University.

And volunteer Zhu Aobing, a former army soldier.

.

More than three months later, with the phase 1 and phase 2 trials completed, the Chinese military, which has developed its recombinant vaccine (adenovirus type five vector: Ad5-nCoV) in collaboration with the CanSino Biologics company,

.

"The results indicate that Ad5-nCoV has the potential to prevent diseases caused by SARS-CoV-2," they explained in a statement.

It took until the end of July to find out what the situation really was for the Chinese vaccine candidates.

, four are being manufactured by companies from the Asian giant.

But the surprise was when from Beijing they announced that

had been launched

, despite not having the approval of international regulators.

They were to be made available to so-called "high-risk groups": health workers, diplomats, some employees of public companies, and people working abroad.

"

under an emergency scheme without a single case of infection or any adverse effect," said Zhou Song, secretary of the disciplinary inspection commission of the China National Biotechnology Group (CNBG) on Monday. ), whose parent company, Sinopharm, has two phase 3 vaccines that are already being tested in trials in other countries such as the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Peru and Argentina.

The first to inject this vaccine were

.

This company, which works together with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, already confirmed in mid-August that

and that the treatment would cost less than 1,000 yuan (120 euros).

"Based on the results of animal experiments, the results of phased investigations and other vaccines using similar technology, there is no doubt that

" said the spokesperson, Zhou Song.

"The vaccine

also

. In fact, there are several subtypes of viruses that are mutating, but their main genetic sequence and protein level have not fundamentally changed. The inactivated vaccine has not. it will have no problem dealing with these mutated viruses for years to come, "Zhou said.

From the National Biotechnology Group, which has built two facilities in Beijing and Wuhan to produce the vaccines, they assure that the annual production capacity of more than 220 million doses will increase to between 800 million and 1,000 million when its facilities are expanded these months.

The other Chinese vaccine approved for "emergency use" has been developed by the Beijing-based pharmaceutical company Sinovac, which announced last weekend that

.

"No serious adverse reactions have been observed in clinical trials, indicating that the vaccine is safe. The reactions observed were mainly pain at the injection site, followed by fatigue, weakness and swelling,

. Only a few have fever and allergic reactions, "said Liu Peicheng, a company spokesman.

Sinovac has also taken his essays outside the Chinese borders, to Brazil and Indonesia.

What are the vaccinated groups

For now, that's all the official information.

But the explanation that there are "hundreds of thousands of vaccinated Chinese" has surprised the world by the proportions, although we are talking about a country with more than 1,400 million inhabitants.

The key question is who exactly have been vaccinated groups.

For example, an official from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China explains to EL MUNDO that many of his colleagues have already received the Sinovac vaccine.

"For now it is only something voluntary,

," he adds.

The pharmaceutical company acknowledges to this newspaper that their vaccine candidate has also been received by the

in Beijing, which was the epicenter of the last major outbreak in the capital in June.

"And the following will surely be the delivery men at home," they say.

Another group being vaccinated by Sinovac, as revealed by the Civil Aviation Administration of China,

: employees of Chinese airlines, airports and the National Aviation Fuel Group.

"Vaccination for these groups is in response to a possible second wave of infections that will break out in the fall and winter,

as Western countries reopen despite the pandemic," said a statement. of the Aviation Administration.

Also, as confirmed to this newspaper by the telecommunications giant Huawei, Sinopharm vaccines have been offered to its employees and will begin to be distributed "to volunteer workers who are constantly on the move and wish to receive it."

To try to decipher more vaccinated groups, we must go back to a curious event that occurred on August 21.

A plane with 150 Chinese miners was scheduled to land in Port Moresby, the capital of Papua New Guinea, one of the poorest nations in the Pacific.

With the pandemic apparently under control in China, the miners were returning to the island state to continue their work at a nickel mine owned by the Beijing-based China Metallurgical Group Corporation (MCC) Ramu NiCo.

However, the plane never arrived in the country because island authorities said the Chinese miners had been injected with one of the coronavirus vaccine candidates.

The Chinese company had announced to the Papua New Guinea National Department of Health that

and were immunized.

A document from the Chinese company stated that its employees "were inoculated with the vaccine against SARS-COV-2" on August 10.

"If they test positive it is due to the normal reaction of the vaccination and not due to the infection," they explained.

In response, island state authorities blocked the flight and asked Beijing for "immediate clarification" because the Pacific nation "does not currently recognize a coronavirus vaccine and will not do so until national regulators and the World Health Organization. have given their approval. "

Meanwhile, in the Asian country, those who continue to receive the experimental vaccines every week, in this case those from CanSino and the Academy of Military Medical Sciences,

.

"Those who most need the vaccine are the troops in peacekeeping missions in other countries and in regions where Covid-19 has not yet been controlled," Yu Xuefeng, president, said in an interview a few days ago on public television. from CanSino Biologics.

Its recombinant vaccine, according to General Chen Wei, can have

.

"The current data shows a very low probability of mutation of the gene that the team selected from the virus to make the vaccine. Until now, the recombinant vaccine can completely cover all the mutations of the new coronavirus," said the general.

"Even if the chosen gene mutates, weakening the protective effect of the vaccine, the current one can still be used to achieve basic immunity, and China can quickly develop a vaccine specifically targeting the mutation to enhance the immunity effect.

"he continued.

The results of this vaccine in its early stages were reviewed by Richard Horton, editor-in-chief of

magazine

, who assured that it was "

."

A statement that was widely shared and celebrated by the Chinese Communist Party propaganda media.

But still, despite China's experiments with hundreds of thousands of its citizens, there is no vaccine that has passed the final, large-scale trials to show whether it is really effective in protecting the world from the coronavirus.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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