Beijing: Days after US drugmaker Moderna announced Phase one trial of its COVID-19 vaccine has shown positive results, researchers on Friday reported that a vaccine developed in China appears to be safe and may protect people from the deadly virus.
According to a report in The New York Times, citing early-stage trial, published in online journal Lancet, those who received a single dose of the vaccine produced certain immune cells, called T cells, within two weeks while the antibodies needed for immunity peaked at 28 days after the inoculation.
The trial was conducted by researchers at several laboratories and included 108 participants aged 18-60.
According to the latest data from Johns Hopkins University, the number of coronavirus cases worldwide has gone up to 5,209,266.
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Dr. Daniel Barouch, director of vaccine research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, who was not involved in the work, acknowledged that this is a promising data' but added that it is early data.
Several teams across the world are in a race to develop a vaccine, considered to be the most effective solution for COVID-19 which has claimed more than 3 lakh lives worldwide.
Apart from Moderna, which announced on Monday about its vaccine showing positive results, Dr. Barouch and his colleagues have published a study showing their prototype vaccine protected monkeys from coronavirus infection.
According to the NYT report, results of just one other human vaccine trial, which has now entered mid-stage human trials have been published in a scientific journal.