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China’s CanSino coronavirus vaccine shows 65.7% efficacy

InternationalFeb 10. 2021

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg

CanSino Biologics’s experimental coronavirus vaccine has an efficacy rate of 65.7% at preventing symptomatic cases based on an analysis from late-stage trials, adding a one-shot candidate to the world’s growing arsenal against covid-19.

The inoculation co-developed by the Chinese military and the Tianjin-based biotech company proved effective against symptomatic covid-19, based on a multicountry analysis first posted on Twitter by Faisal Sultan, Pakistan’s health adviser, on Monday. CanSino later forwarded Sultan’s announcement in a statement. The final stage trial included 30,000 participants and was also 90.98% effective in preventing severe disease, Sultan said.

A vaccine needs to afford at least a 50% protection rate to be considered effective, as mandated by the world’s leading drug regulators and the World Health Organization. While CanSino’s data seems at first glance lower than the 95% protection rate provided by shots from Pfizer and Moderna, it requires just one shot, not two.

That means it’s more accurately compared to Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine, the only other single shot that has released final stage testing data. That vaccine was found to be 66% effective in a global trial.

While their efficacy numbers are lower, single-shot vaccines offer some advantages over the cutting-edge mRNA inoculations from Pfizer and Moderna. The mRNA two-dose shots require deep-freeze storage and risk spoiling if thawed too quickly, creating distribution hurdles. CanSino and J&J’s candidates are easier to store and don’t require people to return at a set time for the second jab — something that’s hard to guarantee especially in developing countries.

“One vaccine, single visit and cheaper logistics, it has all those advantages,” Sultan said in a phone interview Tuesday. “The single-shot is an important factor. Certainly, when you ask people to show up for a second shot three weeks later, people will not show up, forget or not care.”

Among two-dose regimens, China’s vaccines have fallen behind western and Russian peers. The shot developed by the state-owned China National Biotec Group Co., a unit of Sinopharm, was shown to be 78% effective, while one from Sinovac Biotech had a 50.38% rate in a trial involving high-risk medical workers. Russia’s Sputnik V showed efficacy of 91.6%, matching the stellar efficacy of the mRNA shots.

Trials for AstraZeneca Plc’s vaccine resulted in an average of 70% from two different dosing regimes.

The parade of efficacy reports has resulted in a steadily growing arsenal of inoculations as drugmakers and governments have sped up the vaccine development process to fight the pandemic. CanSino adds another successful candidate from Chinese developers, who have played catch-up with Western rivals in finishing Phase III trials after an early lead in the process.

As richer nations secure the first supplies and the WHO-backed Covax initiative that many developing countries were relying on for vaccines has not yet started, China is filling the void by donating its vaccines to poorer places.

CanSino has agreed to supply 35 million doses to Mexico while Malaysia is in talks to get 3.5 million shots. Pakistan, where one of CanSino’s biggest trials is being conducted, will get 20 million shots. Pakistan’s efficacy at preventing symptomatic cases is 74.8%, Sultan said Monday, adding that a tranche of vaccines had been sent by China’s army to his country’s military.

The doses have “been dedicated in its entirety for use in our national vaccine drive to protect health workers in the front line,” he said.

The company is also working to get approval from the WHO so that its vaccine can be procured and distributed through the Covax program.

The company is said to have reached an agreement to run another trial in Russia to see whether swapping the second dose of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine with that from CanSino would produce the same or better protection against covid-19. Russia has faced production challenges for Sputnik’s second shot, which uses the same adenovirus vector to deliver the coronavirus antigen that CanSino does.

CanSino’s so-called viral vector vaccine, which loads an antigen from the coronavirus on a harmless cold-causing pathogen called adenovirus, was the first in the world to start human clinical trials back in March as China mobilized its drug regulators, research institutes and pharmaceutical companies in an all-out effort to develop tools against the coronavirus.

CanSino got off to a strong start, outpacing western rivals including Pfizer and AstraZeneca in pushing its shot through early human testing. Yet it got caught in growing tensions between China and Canada, with a planned trial in the North American country indefinitely delayed.

Meanwhile, the near elimination of the virus in China forced CanSino and other Chinese vaccine frontrunners to embark on a time-consuming search for testing sites for Phase III trials in other parts of the world.

The company eventually started those tests in Pakistan, Russia, Argentine, Mexico and Chile, when Western frontrunners were already close to reporting interim results.

Chinese vaccines have faced some skepticism because of confusion over efficacy rates and a lack of transparency, as the developers have disclosed less safety and testing information than western front-runners. The issues have threatened to undermine trust in shots that President Xi Jinping has promised to share with the rest of the world as a global public good.

They are nonetheless being rolled out across Asia, the Middle East and South America, with endorsements from heads of state. Mexico President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has pledged to get the CanSino shot, while Indonesian President Joko Widodo received Sinovac’s vaccine in a televised ceremony.

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Jamie Dimon, other CEOs meet with President Biden at White House as relief plan advances

InternationalFeb 10. 2021Jamie Dimon, Chair and CEO of JP Morgan Chase, testifies before the House Financial Services Commitee in Washington on April 10, 2019. MUST CREDIT: photo for The Washington Post by J. Lawler Duggan.

By The Washington Post · Tom Hamburger, Jeff Stein, Erica Werner

WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden met at the White House on Tuesday with JPMorgan Chase Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon and other leading business executives to discuss the administration’s $1.9 trillion economic relief package, as Democrats work to speed the plan through Congress.

The meeting also included Doug McMillon, CEO of Walmart; Sonia Syngal from GAP; Marvin Ellison, CEO of Lowe’s; and Tom Donohue, of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Vice President Kamala Harris and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen also took part.

The meeting with the business executives comes as the White House accelerates its push for Biden’s $1.9 trillion relief proposal amid increasing opposition from congressional Republicans. House Democrats have unveiled key portions of the legislation and on Tuesday began holding what will be a lengthy series of committee meetings this week to vote on various portions of the package, leading up to final House passage later this month.

The developments coincided with the start of the Senate’s impeachment trial of former president Donald Trump, but Biden told reporters he wasn’t watching the trial.

“I have a job. My job is to help people. We have already lost over 450,000 people and we could lose a whole lot more if we don’t act and act decisively,” Biden said as his meeting with the business leaders got underway. “A lot of people, as I have said before, children are going to bed hungry. A lot of families are food insecure. They are in trouble. That’s my job.”

The meeting of the business executives also comes amid an intensifying fight over Democrats’ proposal to hike the minimum wage to $15 per hour. McMillon, who is also the chairman of the influential Business Roundtable, said last month that he supports a boost to the minimum wage. Dimon has also previously backed a minimum wage hike.

But the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has urged lawmakers not to use the “current crisis . . . as an opportunity to enact long-sought permanent policy changes, like raising the minimum wage.” The Chamber also called existing $1 trillion annual deficits a “real cause for concern.”

The business leaders are expected to bring up the minimum wage proposal at the White House, two people familiar with the matter said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the private meeting.

Biden’s plan to raise the federal minimum wage has become a particularly contentious element of his relief package, which also includes hundreds of billions of dollars for cities, states and schools; rental assistance and eviction relief; and $160 billion for a national vaccine program, increased testing and other assistance for the health care system.

Additionally, Biden’s proposal includes a new round of $1,400 stimulus checks to individuals. Democrats have been debating who should be eligible to receive those checks, and considered lowering the income threshold for individuals to $50,000 from the $75,000 Biden initially proposed, which had applied to previous stimulus payments — including $600 checks Congress agreed to in December.

However, the Ways and Means Committee on Monday released legislation keeping the $75,000 income limit for individuals and $150,000 for couples, but adding a faster phaseout period so that no money goes to individuals with incomes over $100,000 or couples with incomes over $200,000.

Asked Tuesday whether he supported the structure of the checks as proposed by House Democrats, Biden responded: “Yes.”

Many lawmakers are concerned that the minimum wage increase will not be accepted by the Senate parliamentarian under the special budget rules Democrats are using to push the relief bill through Congress without GOP votes.

Asked about that issue Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said: “We’re trying to work as well as we can with the parliamentarian to get minimum wage to happen. That’s all I’m going to say.”

House Democrats debated internally whether to incorporate the minimum wage increase in their bill but the proposal is strongly supported by members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and was ultimately included.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has also said it opposes Biden’s proposal to raise federal unemployment benefits from $300 per week to $400, saying the measure “distorts the labor market and deters individuals from returning to work.”

This is not the first time Biden has met with officials who have criticized elements of his relief plan. Earlier this month, Biden hosted 10 Senate Republicans to discuss the next relief package – although he has appeared to reject their pleas to seek a bipartisan bill.

“As you know I met a long time with my Republican colleagues, have been exchanging correspondence and telephone calls as well to see if there’s any way we can follow-up beyond where we are,” Biden said. “I think we’re in a position to think big and move big and move in a direction that cannot only get the economy back on its feet, but we have to get people well.”

Biden also said he was anxious to hear how the business executives felt about the relief package and expressed optimism they could find “common ground,” just as he had sought with Senate Republicans.

JPMorgan Chase has previously called for another round of pandemic relief for poorer families as well as the renewal of support for unemployed Americans, among other measures.

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Russian big business steps in to speed coronavirus vaccine roll out

InternationalFeb 10. 2021Workers arrive for their shifts at the main office at the Dneprovsky Iron & Steel Works, operated by Evraz Group, in Dnipro, Ukraine, on Jan. 25, 2017. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Vincent Mundy

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Yuliya Fedorinova

Russia is turning to its industrial giants, many of which operate in far-flung locations spread across the world’s biggest country, to help ramp up its covid-19 vaccination campaign after a slow start.

Companies from the biggest gold miner Polyus PJSC to the largest iron ore producer Metalloinvest Holding are trying to procure the shots and offer logistical support to get supplies of the domestically produced Sputnik V vaccine to the often remote areas where they work.

Russia is dominated by big business, with small and medium enterprises making up just a fifth of the economy compared with as much as 40% in other emerging economies, according to the World Bank. Getting the country’s factories and natural resources companies to pitch in could be key to stemming the pandemic as authorities seek to vaccinate 60% of adults in the first half of the year.

Polyus aims to make the vaccine available to all employees and contractors, according to a statement Tuesday. The company, whose main assets are in the Siberian wilderness far from cities or airports, started offering on-site inoculations this month and has shipped 1,100 doses to its Olimpiada and Blagodatnoye mines to date, it said.

Metalloinvest is helping local health officials track its employees who want to receive the vaccine and has made the shots available at some work sites, a spokesman said.

Steelmaker Evraz Plc seeks to vaccinate 50% to 70% of employees, with billionaire Chief Executive Officer Alexander Frolov among the first to get inoculated, according to a spokesman. Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel PJSC lets workers apply for a vaccine appointment via a corporate mobile app, it said in a statement Monday.

The corporate push comes after covid-19 disrupted operations throughout Russia, one of the hardest hit countries worldwide. Russia had the third-highest number of covid-19 deaths last year, after the U.S. and Brazil.

Even so, the public remains wary of Sputnik V, which was authorized for use before large-scale testing had begun. Only 38% of Russians said they would take it, according to a December poll.

Interim research published last week in The Lancet medical journal indicates Sputnik V is highly effective against covid-19, spurring hopes that more people will seek the shot. Alternatives are also becoming available, and on Monday President Vladimir Putin boasted Russia is the only country with three domestically developed coronavirus vaccines.

“covid-19 is still a risk for industrial companies, while vaccines are available mostly in big cities,” Kirill Chuyko, head of research at BCS Global Markets, said by phone. “There’s a deficit in the regions, so it makes perfect scene for companies to facilitate their employees getting the shots.”

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After Wuhan mission on pandemic origins, WHO team dismisses lab leak theory

InternationalFeb 10. 2021Peter Ben Embarek, the Danish food safety expert leading the WHO team

By The Washington Post · Gerry Shih, Emily Rauhala

TAIPEI, Taiwan – After a 12-day visit, a World Health Organization mission to Wuhan appeared no closer Tuesday to solving the mystery of the pandemic’s origins, reiterating that the coronavirus likely spread to humans from an animal and casting doubt on theories it leaked from a lab.

The group’s findings – more than a year after the initial outbreak and after months wrangling between China and the U.N. health agency – could be a small step toward understanding the roots of a global crisis.

But the update is unlikely to satisfy U.S. officials and others around the world calling for greater transparency from China – or to silence questions about whether the Geneva-based WHO is equipped to investigate at all.

At a news conference, the team of Chinese and international researchers said they found that the virus was spreading in Wuhan during December 2019 both inside and outside the Huanan Seafood Market. That suggested the market was not necessarily the original source of the outbreak, the scientists said.

The team also left open the possibility that the virus may have been transmitted to humans through frozen food – a once fringe theory that Chinese officials have been touting as part of broader push to claim that covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, did not come from China.

Notably, the WHO team dismissed as “extremely unlikely” another theory that the virus leaked from laboratories at the local Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). Peter Ben Embarek, the Danish food safety expert leading the WHO team, said his group was satisfied with answers about safety at the WIV and will not recommend further investigation into the possible links to the lab.

“Just saying that they have really good safety protocols is not an answer in my view,” said Marc Lipsitch, a professor of epidemiology at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, who was not among the scientists on the trip. “That alone does not put my mind at rest.”

It was never likely that the team would reach a definitive conclusion after two weeks in quarantine and less than two weeks of on-site investigation. But the dismissal of the lab theory, in particular, is likely to draw scrutiny.

Most researchers believe the virus passed through an intermediary animal host – such as pangolins – and evolved into a form that is easily transmissible among humans.

A smaller circle of experts says the possibility cannot be ruled out that the virus slipped out of the WIV, an institution that conducts work on coronaviruses sampled from bats.

The mission was composed of Chinese and international researchers. The lead Chinese scientist, Liang Wannian, told reporters that none of the labs in Wuhan had worked with SARS-Cov-2 strain, as the coronavirus is officially called, but on the virus’s distant relatives.

Instead, Liang pointed to the possibility that the virus jumped across species in nature through intermediary hosts such as pangolins, cats or minks. Ben Embarek agreed that it was “most likely” the virus evolved in nature and spread to humans through an intermediary host.

Ben Embarek told reporters that the judgment was based on “long, frank, open discussions with researchers and management” at institutions including the WIV. The institute provided “detailed descriptions of the center’s research both present and past on all projects involving bats and coronaviruses and more advanced projects,” he said.

He added that he questioned WIV officials extensively about what they thought of the lab leak hypothesis. “They’re the best ones to dismiss the claims and provide answers to all the questions,” the WHO team leader said.

But that line of reasoning that drew skepticism from outside experts.

“If the only information you’re allowing to be weighed is provided by the very people who have everything to lose by revealing such evidence, that just doesn’t come close to passing the sniff test,” said David Relman, a microbiologist at Stanford University.

Relman suggested that the WHO team should have sought complete, detailed records from the laboratories about their experiments and the raw genomic sequence data of their research going back a decade.

Raina MacIntyre, professor of biosecurity at the University of New South Wales in Australia, was also surprised to see the idea of a lab accident ruled out so quickly.

Without exploring all leads, she suggested, “We may never know the origins of this virus.”

The search for answers about the source of the pandemic had been fraught from the start.

It is clear now that China withheld critical information about the outbreak in Wuhan in the early days. The WHO, for its part, has faced criticism for failing to call them out.

In February 2020, WHO researchers traveled to China to study the novel coronavirus. The team’s enthusiastic praise for Chinese officials led many to wonder whether the agency was up to the task of holding Beijing to account.

As the crisis in the U.S. worsened, the Trump administration seized on the critique and used it to shift blame, with top U.S. officials floating unproven claims about the origin of the virus – and Chinese officials firing back with unproven claims of their own.

In the months since, the U.N. health agency has been caught in the middle. China, however, is already trying to move on.

On Tuesday, Liang and an official from China’s National Health Commission declared the China leg of the WHO probe complete and called for its scope to be expanded globally to answer the origin question.

In recent days, Chinese state media have preempted Tuesday’s news conference with reports declaring Wuhan has been “cleared of guilt” as the suspected origin of the pandemic, with some echoing the Chinese Foreign Ministry in calling for an investigation into U.S. labs.

A key question going forward will be whether the WHO team is allowed to return to China. In a pre-trip interview with The Washington Post, Ben Embarek said he believed the search would require trips to different places in China.

It remains to be seen, however, whether China will grant the WHO access, said Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations.

“There will be more pressure to do more work in China,” Huang said. “I hope this going to be the starting point of a more in-depth, more comprehensive investigation.”

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Xi pitches vaccine to Eastern Europe in bid to revive ties

InternationalFeb 10. 2021President Xi Jinping

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg

President Xi Jinping said China stands ready to provide Eastern Europe with coronavirus vaccines, part of efforts to reboot relations harmed by the failure of the government in Beijing to deliver on investment promises.

The comments come amid tensions within the European Union over the bloc’s procurement of shots to combat covid-19, with member states unable to match the pace of other Western nations in inoculating their citizens. Chinese companies have already provided 1 million vaccine doses to Serbia, an EU aspirant that’s also using Russia’s Sputnik injection.

Addressing leaders and other high-level representatives at an online summit on Tuesday, Xi revealed that China plans to import more than $170 billion of goods from the continent’s former communist east in the next five years, during which time it will also double agricultural imports. Other initiatives include deepening ties on the green economy, e-commerce and health care.

Tuesday’s meeting of the China and Central and Eastern European Countries forum — more commonly referred to as the CEE, or 17+1 — comes shortly after Beijing concluded a landmark investment deal with the EU following seven years of negotiation. There’s been a lack of regular dialogue of late because of the pandemic.

“We maintain mutual respect,” Xi said, according to the official readout from the state news agency Xinhua. “Cooperation doesn’t have political strings attached.”

China is working to rebuild diplomatic ties in Europe as it faces growing criticism from mainly Western countries over issues ranging from its handling of information on covid-19 to its crackdown on Muslim Uighurs in Xinjiang and a controversial national-security law for Hong Kong that could spark an exodus to the U.K.

It also wants to reset its relationship with the U.S. under Joe Biden after the Trump administration fueled global skepticism over China’s intentions.

The CEE format took shape in 2012 as a way for China to forge ties with 16 eastern European countries, many EU members that felt overlooked by Brussels. Greece joined the group in 2019. Trade between China and these countries reached $103 billion last year, up 8.4% year on year, China’s Commerce Ministry Spokesman Gao Feng said Feb. 4.

While supplying Serbia — and Hungary, which will get its first doses next week — with coronavirus vaccines developed by China’s Sinopharm is seen as a success, a lack of investment has disappointed the region. Enthusiasm for the 17+1 is waning as some countries bristle at widening trade balances with China, despite the Asian country pointing to growing volumes with Eastern Europe, according to a European diplomat in Beijing who asked not to be identified.

“Beijing is eager to portray the summit as a victory for China and a signal that ties between China and the region are supposedly close and could remain so also under the Biden presidency,” said Grzegorz Stec, an analyst with Berlin-based think tank Merics.

But the summit “can’t avert the economic disillusionment of CEE countries, which are also increasingly mindful of security and geostrategic implications of cooperating with China,” Stec said.

The cancellation of an in-person summit planned for April 2020 further weakened ties, and — in an apparent snub — Lithuania and Estonia said neither their president nor prime minister would attend Tuesday’s event, sending lower-level officials in their stead, Politico reported.

China is hoping to carry out cooperation with Eastern Europe in areas in line with the European Union’s interests, said Wang Yiwei, director of the Institute of International Affairs at Renmin University in Beijing and a former Chinese diplomat.

“The 17 countries are rather marginalized in the EU, yet they’re at the center of the Eurasian continent,” said Wang. “They therefore have geographical significance for China’s aspirations to boost interconnectivity.”