A big state-owned Chinese pharmaceutical company’s head says its coronavirus vaccine will be available commercially by year-end.
SinoPharm ‘s chairman Liu Jingzhen told a newspaper in the Chinese Communist Party that the vaccine would cost less than 1,000 yuan ($140) and be given in two doses, 28 days apart.
He said students and staff would need to get the vaccine in major cities, but not those living in sparsely populated rural areas.
“Not all of the 1.4 billion people in our country have to take it,” he said in an interview published Tuesday in the Guangming Daily.
SinoPharm, which has two vaccines in trial, has a production potential of 220 million doses per annum, Liu said.
Liu, who is also the secretary of the Communist Party at the business, told the paper he was injected with the vaccine.
Reports that Chinese researchers and executives have received shots of their vaccines have raised ethical questions in some scientific circles.