Coronavirus vaccine to go on sale in December, claims China

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Kit Heren18 August 2020

China's coronavirus vaccine will be available to buy in December, the company developing it has said.

The state-owned China National Pharmaceutical Group Corporation said the vaccine is currently undergoing its third and final trial.

Two shots of the vaccine will cost less than 1,000 yuan (about £110) and will be completely effective, company president Liu Jingzhen said.

He told state-owned media: "When it’s available in the market, it won’t be too expensive but costs a few hundred yuan per shot. If you take two shots, the price should be within 1,000 yuan."

Vaccine researchers at a lab in China
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Mr Liu added that he had been inoculated twice already and suffered no ill-effects from the vaccine.

The company is aiming to produce 220 million doses per year, he added - suggesting that the UK may struggle to get hold of the vaccine for some time, as China has a population of around 1.4 billion people.

The Chinese vaccine is "inactivated" - meaning it is a virus that has been grown in a laboratory and killed. These vaccines are usually less effective than "live" vaccines, meaning several doses could be necessary.

There are more than 170 groups of researchers working to produce a vaccine that would help the world go back to normal, it is hoped.

A vaccine researcher at a lab in China
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Russia announced last week that it was the first country to give regulatory approval to a vaccine, after just two months of human testing and without completing the final stage of trials.

President Vladimir Putin said: "I know that it works quite effectively, forms strong immunity, and I repeat, it has passed all the needed checks."

But many onlookers raised concerns that the vaccine had been rushed out as a sign of national strength and could be unsafe - adding fuel to the fire of the anti-vaccination movement.

Francois Balloux of University College London said in a statement: "This is a reckless and foolish decision. Any problem with the Russian vaccination campaign would be disastrous both through its negative effects on health, but also because it would further set back the acceptance of vaccines in the population."

Vaccine researchers at a lab in China 
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Oxford University is also among the front-runners to produce a coronavirus vaccine. Kate Bingham, chair of the UK's vaccine taskforce, told Sky News: "I think we have a shot of getting a vaccine this year.

"There's two potential candidates, one would be the Oxford candidate and the other one is the German vaccine from BioNTech."