In China’s vaccine race, shortage of monkeys and weekends

by Qian Ye and Matthew Knight

Inside one of the Chinese labs racing to create a coronavirus vaccine, researchers work weekends, lab monkeys are in short supply and plans are being made for human trials abroad.

Yisheng Biopharma, a company based in the northeastern city of Shenyang, has been working non-stop since January to find the silver bullet against the disease that emerged in China late last year.

A resurgence of cases in Beijing — after China had largely brought the virus under control — has highlighted the urgency for the world to find a vaccine against the coronavirus, which has killed more than 450,000 people around the world.

Yisheng is better known for making rabies vaccines, but it has converted one of its nine workshops into a coronavirus inoculation production line and will recruit up to 50 extra workers.

The company is still in the early stages of development. But it will take the risk of starting production of its vaccine in September, before completing clinical trials, so the shots are ready sooner for the public if the product is approved.

“This vaccine must appear quickly, and it is impossible to wait until the next epidemic season to complete the trial and the third epidemic season to use the vaccine,” Yisheng chairman Zhang Yi told AFP.

Zhang said his researchers had not had any rest on weekends since they got the gene sequence of the coronavirus, on the second day of Chinese New Year in late January.

“There is too much work to do,” he said. (AFP)