‘We Will Share Our Vaccine with the World.’ Inside the Chinese Biotech Firm Leading the Fight Against COVID-19

It was the Chinese philosopher Sun Tzu, and not Al Pacino in The Godfather Part 2, who first said, “Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.” Yin Weidong, the CEO of Chinese biotech firm SinoVac, seems to have taken that advice to heart. On the desk in his office in Beijing are two plastic models of a virus—each blue core surrounded by red protein spikes. From the time it started spreading in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in late December, containing that virus has occupied virtually every waking moment for the scientist. The pandemic we now know as COVID-19 is rampaging across every continent. On the dozens of daily infection charts, broken down by nation and pasted floor to ceiling on Yin’s office wall, the numbers tell a horrifying story: 16 million infections and 640,000 deaths worldwide, including 146,000 American lives lost as of Monday. But if the enemy is close, so is a possible new friend. Yin’s desk is now also home to several small glass vials of SinoVac’s COVID-19 vaccine—dubbed CoronaVac—that began phase 3 trials involving 9,000 volunteers in Brazil last week. (A phase 1 trial involves small groups of patients to check a vaccine for negative side effects, and a phase two trial usually tests for a combination of safety and efficacy, while a phase 3 trial is like a phase 2 but involving many more participants.) “Looking at the data collected, I think we have more than an 80% chance of success,&rdqu...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized COVID-19 overnight Source Type: news