China’s New mRNA Covid Vaccine Targeting Omicron Starts Trial Production

The vaccine is now undergoing clinical trials that have shown positive results in terms of safety and ability to provoke an immune response, the release said. CanSino didn’t immediately respond to a request for more detailed information about the results of the trials, or the significance of the test production run.

CS-2034, as CanSino’s shot is now called, is based on the same gene-based messenger RNA technology found in

Pfizer Inc.

and

Moderna Inc.’s

vaccines. The breakthrough comes after almost three years of fighting the pandemic, during which Beijing has relied largely on homegrown vaccines that have grown less effective than mRNA shots in combating new strains of the virus.

Low levels of effective vaccination and an almost complete absence of exposure to Covid enabled the new variant to race through China’s population, according to public-health experts. While China’s main Sinovac and Sinopharm shots provide high levels of protection against severe illness and death, they aren’t enough to stop the virus from spreading, according to published medical research and the World Health Organization.

In November, China agreed to approve the domestic use of Pfizer’s vaccine, which was developed with Germany’s

BioNTech SE,

but only for some foreign residents. More than 4.3 billion doses of the vaccine have been shipped globally, according to Pfizer. 

At the moment, China mostly uses so-called inactivated vaccines, which use a neutralized sample of a pathogen to provoke an immune response from the body. In September, China approved an inhalable vaccine made by CanSino; that was the world’s first for Covid, for use as a booster.

The CanSino vaccine targeting the BA.5…