Dusseldorf, Frankfurt China is relaxing its restrictive corona policy and is focusing on new drugs. “We have now entered a new phase of the Covid response, with difficult challenges still to be overcome,” said President Xi Jinping. With Lagrevio from the US manufacturer Merck, China has now approved another Western-made drug for therapy.
When it comes to immunization, the country as a whole continues to rely on in-house developments. This includes a new type of nasal spray that is intended to significantly reduce the risk of infection when used several times a day. At least this is what the study data from China, which have now been published, promise. After the success of the study, Federal Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach has already spoken out on Twitter. “Let’s start 2023 with good news, while being careful with the data”, he wrote on the short message service. “Chinese nasal vaccine shows good effect. Nasal vaccines are important. Nobody wants endless Covid episodes.”
However, the new product from Chinese laboratories is not a classic vaccine that stimulates the immune system and thus prepares for a possible Covid disease. The nasal spray developed by the Chinese company Sinovac introduces broad-spectrum antibodies into the respiratory tract so that the corona viruses can be successfully combated there. There is still a long way to go before such a drug is approved.
But it shows China’s ambitions for its own successes in the medical fight against Corona. Drugs are likely to play a crucial role in the government’s new corona policy after the rigid restrictions and lockdowns have been abandoned.
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The serious effects of the easing are already becoming apparent: the government’s top health authority estimates that up to 248 million people, almost 18 percent of the population, could have been infected with the virus in the first 20 days of December. The result was overcrowded emergency rooms in hospitals and crematoria.
Beijing continues to rely on domestic vaccines for now
Almost three years after the viral disease first broke out in Wuhan, China, the giant empire is still struggling with the consequences of the pandemic. Because neither the rigid isolation nor the abrupt relaxation of the corona measures ordered in December have improved the situation from the point of view of the government.
>> Read about this: China’s corona easing seems hasty and poorly prepared
This is also due to the comparatively low vaccination rate, especially among the elderly population, for whom corona disease poses serious to fatal risks. According to official figures, only 40 percent of Chinese over the age of 80 are triple vaccinated. Now Beijing wants to quickly increase the vaccination rate with a large-scale campaign.
It is foreseeable that the government will continue to rely on domestic vaccines for the time being. Biontech and Moderna’s mRNA drugs used in the West are not yet approved in China. The use of Biontech boosters was only permitted shortly before Christmas for Germans living in Hong Kong and for Germans living in China.
However, a large-scale release is not foreseeable, although the mRNA agents are more effective than the vaccines developed in China, which are based on dead virus material. US intelligence services recently confirmed that China’s government still does not want to accept vaccines from abroad – this is a question of national pride.
>> Read also: End of the quarantine obligation in China – What business travelers need to know now
So far, this has only been different for the therapeutic agents that can be used after an infection with corona. Beijing had already approved the use of Paxlovid from the US company Pfizer, and Lagrevio from Merck is now being added as an emergency approval.
It is an open question whether China can permanently do without the successful mRNA vaccines from the West. Biontech still sees chances of approval. Because discoveries like the nasal spray that is now being presented have not yet proven that they can bring about a medical breakthrough. Since the beginning of the corona pandemic, researchers have been trying to develop drugs and vaccines that can be administered as a nasal spray. The idea behind it: to fight the corona virus where it enters the body. That means on the mucous membranes of the nose, throat and lungs.
Hospitals in China at the limit
The test results now published by Chinese researchers could certainly give the concept a new boost. In this case, a spray made from antibodies against Sars-Cov-2 was tested in a study with around 6,000 employees from Covid clinics in China.
Around 1700 of the participants were treated with the antibody spray called SA58 once or twice a day for a month with the aim of protecting them from Covid infections in the short term. According to the authors, the risk of infection in this group was reduced by 77.7 percent compared to the untreated comparison group.
Nasal vaccines have so far had little success
However, as the authors acknowledge, this was not a consistently controlled study. Frequent changes in the medical staff in the participating clinics would have made it difficult to comply with the planned observation time for all participants.
Overall, studies with nasal drugs and vaccines have so far proven to be unsuccessful. The challenges are high. The Munich biotech company Ethris, for example, which is pursuing a corresponding project together with the Swiss company Neurimmune, is still in the preclinical test phase.
The government continues to rely on funds from domestic production.
(Photo: Bloomberg)
Boehringer Ingelheim and the University of Cologne have stopped working on such an antibody. As far as the development of nasally administered vaccines is concerned, it is still difficult to see whether they can really play a role. Five nasal vaccines have now been officially approved in China, India, Iran and Russia, including vector-based vaccines from the Indian company Bharat and the Chinese company Cansino Biologics.
However, little is known about the effectiveness of this vaccine. Little or no data has been published to date.
Western vaccine developers are still mostly in the early clinical test phases with corresponding projects. Researchers at Oxford University reported disappointing data in mid-October for a relatively small phase 1 trial of Astra-Zeneca’s spray-administered Covid vaccine Vaxzevria. The vaccine elicited an antibody response in the mucous membranes in only a minority of participants and did not generate strong systemic immunity overall.
A problem with nasally administered vector vaccines is that the mucous membranes of the nose and lungs are specialized to fight off foreign substances and organisms. The viruses used as transport vehicles (vectors) may therefore be intercepted before they can develop their immunizing effect against Sars-CoV-2.
More: Covid wave in China – Booster with Biontech vaccine allowed in Hong Kong