China to enhance capacity building in epidemic prevention, control
By Zhang
Jinruo, People’s Daily
The
Lancet, a world
leading medical journal, on May 22 published the latest research results of a
team led by Chen Wei, an academician with the Chinese Academy of Engineering
and a researcher at the Institute of Military Medicine under the Academy of
Military Sciences, saying China’s COVID-19 vaccine trial, the first such
vaccine to undergo phase 1 clinical trial, has been found to be well-tolerated
and able to generate an immune response against the virus in humans at 28 days
post-vaccination.
Chen and
her team began COVID-19 vaccine research immediately after China shared the
genetic sequence of the virus to the World Health Organization. She said the
phase 1 clinical trial “demonstrated that a single dose of the new adenovirus
type 5 vectored COVID-19 (Ad5-nCoV) vaccine produces virus-specific antibodies
and T cells in 14 days, making it a potential candidate for further
investigation,” calling the achievement an important milestone.
The new
progress, the first COVID-19 vaccine human trial in the world, is exciting
although another six months are still needed to further test whether the immune
response it elicits effectively protects humans from the virus.
The development
of an effective vaccine is seen as a long-term solution to controlling the
COVID-19 pandemic. Currently, there are more than 100 candidate COVID-19
vaccines in development worldwide.
Chen is
also a member of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political
Consultative Conference (CPPCC). What she proposed to the ongoing annual
session of the political advisory body this year in Beijing is also about the
pandemic – to build a national biosafety science and industry innovation
center.
“Decades
of research, especially the frontline experience I gained in Wuhan, drove me to
make concrete innovations in biosafety, something that can be popularized
quickly to benefit the people,” she said.
Chen is
not fighting alone. Zhao Chenxin, deputy secretary general of China’s National
Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the country’s top economic planner,
also announced on a May 24 press conference that China has already been
improving the investment structure of the central budget, focusing on five
major tasks such as enhancing the testing capability for major infectious
diseases and building emergency response capacity, to better protect people’s
lives and health, as well as the security of the country.
The NDRC
will move faster to upgrade facilities and equipment of disease prevention and control
institutions, and ensure that every provincial-level region in China will have a
biosafety level-3 (P3) laboratory and every prefecture-level city will have a
P2 lab, Zhao noted, adding that the move will significantly improve the country’s
rapid testing and response capabilities for major epidemics.
According
to the official, the five major tasks also include stockpiling emergency
supplies which are used to meet the demand of local hospitals at ordinary times
and to be allocated by the central government when emergency happens.
The NDRC
also stressed that emergency response should be taken into full consideration
in the construction of new major venues or other public facilities, so that
these buildings can be quickly shifted into shelters for patients with mild
symptoms in sudden outbreaks of epidemics.
screenshot
of a paper published on The Lancet by a research team led by Chen Wei, an
academician with the Chinese Academy of Engineering and a researcher at the
Institute of Military Medicine under the Academy of Military Sciences.
China to enhance capacity building in epidemic prevention, control
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