A COVID-19 vaccine could be put into emergency use as early as this fall, China's top respiratory expert Zhong Nanshan said during a live medical event with China's tech giant Baidu on Saturday.
Natural immunity takes 60 to 70 percent of a country's population to be infected by the novel coronavirus, which could cause a death toll of 30 to 40 million, "therefore, the solution is still mass vaccination," he said.
Currently, six vaccines are undergoing clinical trials on the Chinese mainland.
Vaccine development in China
China released a white paper on Sunday, detailing the country's efforts in combating the novel coronavirus and its international cooperation over the past several months.
Since the outbreak of the epidemic, China has been promoting research and development of medicines, vaccines and testing reagents for the novel coronavirus.
According to the white paper, Chinese researchers have been racing against time to develop vaccines using five technical routes – inactivated vaccines, recombinant protein vaccines, attenuated influenza virus vaccines, adenoviral vector vaccines and nucleic acid vaccines.
So far, four inactivated vaccines and one adenoviral vector vaccine have been approved for clinical trials. China's overall vaccine development is on par with the international community, with some technical routes in a leading position.
