Beijing has approved the use of the Ad5-nCov vaccine among the army ranks, but CanSino Bio, the manufacturer, does not guarantee that it will be available on a large scale in the future
he news that many have been waiting for has arrived: the first Vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 was approved for use onhuman being. It's about Ad5-nCov, the candidate of the Chinese giant CanSino Biologics, developed together with the Chinese Academy of Military Sciences. In this new phase, it will last one year, the vaccine will be administered only to soldiers, the company added, and “its commercial success cannot be guaranteed”.
Ad5-nCov
Like other vaccine candidates, for example the Oxford vaccine which sees an Italian participation, Ad5-nCov consists of a viral vector (the adenovirus 5) which transports certain Sars-Cov-2 genes eliciting an immune response.
Among the most advanced projects in terms of time, the CanSino Bio vaccine in May, at the conclusion of phase 1 of the experimentation, had demonstrated to be Safe and had been able to access phase 2, proving to be able to produce one strong immune reaction by the organism.
Hence the decision of China (and also of Canada, reports the agency Reuters) to approve it for limited use. In the press release of the CanSino Bio company, in fact, it is specified that the approval arrived on June 25th and that it is valid for one year as “specially needed drug”.
“Ad5-nCoV is currently limited to military use only and its use it cannot be extended for a larger campaign of vaccinations without the approval of the Logistical Support Department [of the Central Military Commission]”.
It is not known whether the vaccine will be compulsorily administered to soldiers or on a voluntary basis. As he relates Reuters the Chinese pharmaceutical giant has refused to answer as "trade secret".
The other candidates
In early June, China had offered to employees of state-owned companies who travel abroad the ability to access to two other vaccine candidates against Sars-Cov-2.
At the same time, the Chinese Academy of Military Sciences received approval to test another experimental vaccine on humans (phase 1), called ArCov, which is based on the RNA technology – the same approach employed by the vaccine candidates of Moderna Inc (USA) and CureVac (Germany). Indeed, ArCov has given promising results in studies on non-human primates.
However, let us remember that the hundreds of vaccine projects for Covid-19 in development all over the world, about twenty are being tested on humans. Nobody but it is still approved for commercial use.