China plans to mass produce a vaccine to protect
humans against the deadly bird flu virus after initial tests indicated
it was safe, state media said on Wednesday.
The vaccine's manufacturer, Sinovac Biotech Limited,
announced it plans to produce 20 million vaccines annually within
the next few years, the Beijing News and Xinhua news agency said.
Results from the first round of trials, which ended
in June, showed that the 120 people who were vaccinated had no serious
adverse reactions, company officials said this week.
"These results indicate that we should expand
our production capabilities to prepare for mass production of the
vaccine against a possible bird flu
pandemic," a company spokesperson was quoted as saying by Xinhua
on Wednesday.
But the vaccine must undergo two more phases of
clinical trials before it is allowed to enter the market, Xinhua
said.
The company jointly developed the inoculation with
China's ministry of science and technology and the centre for disease
control and prevention.
The H5N1 bird
flu virus is mainly spread among poultry and occasionally from poultry
to humans. But experts fear it could mutate into a form easily transmitted
between humans.
About a dozen companies are conducting clinical
trials on bird flu vaccines worldwide, Xinhua said.
But the World Health Organisation's top official
in China has said vaccines might be useless in the event of a bird
flu pandemic as the virus would have mutated.
It was difficult to predict mutations and it could
take months to produce a new vaccine after one had occurred, the
official has said.
