(Yicai Global) April 22 -- China has developed three vaccines targeting Omicron, the highly transmissible variant of the novel coronavirus currently wreaking havoc in many parts of the country, and all three began clinical trials this month, an official from the National Health Commission said.

The Omicron-specific jabs are expected to go to market once they pass the trials, Zheng Zhongwei, director of the NHC’s Development Center for Medical Science and Technology, said at the Boao Forum for Asia’s annual conference yesterday. After which, China will insist on making Omicron-targeted vaccines publicly available around the world. 

Two of the three vaccines are being developed by China National Biotec Group, a subsidiary of Sinopharm, while the other is being developed by Sinovac Biotech. All are inactivated jabs, which uses a killed rather than an attenuated form of the virus, and they secured permission to carry out clinical trials in Hong Kong.

China started developing vaccines targeting Omicron in November last year when the World Health Organization began to pay close attention to the new strain, said Zheng, who is also the head of the vaccine development team at the State Council’s Joint Prevention and Control Mechanism.

Current research shows that the booster shot is the best way to avoid catching Covid-19 for now, but there may be new outbreaks and the novel coronavirus is still likely to mutate again, Zheng said. Whether having more jabs will help is still under debate.

China has supplied over 2.1 billion doses of Covid-19 vaccines to 120 nations and international organizations around the world to date, Zheng said. 

Editors: Dou Shicong, Kim Taylor