Sinovac plans to have a new version of its vaccine against the omicron variant in three months

The Chinese company Sinovac has planned to have a list in approximately three months a new version of the Covid-19 vaccine, the Coronavac, adapted to the new omicron variant, which has put the world on alert due to its high number of mutations. This was announced Yaling Hu, vice president of Sinovac, in an assembly organized by the Butantan Institute of São Paulo.

Vaccine development

“The development of the vaccine against the omicron strain will be completed in three months,” which also has a production capacity of between “1 billion and 1.5 billion doses per year,” said Yaling Hu, a member of the group. specialist of the World Health Organization. The process to adapt the drug to the new omicron variant, detected mainly in South Africa last November and about which much is still unknown, has already begun, and includes a plan to determine its efficacy in laboratory experiments and subsequently through human trials in different age ranges.

“In the first evaluation we want to isolate the virus and do a neutralizing antibody test including different immunization schedules,” he explained.
Yaling Hu in your lecture. As detailed by data from the Butantan, one of the most prestigious research institutions in Brazil, ” Coronavac has been used in 45 countries ” since the pandemic which has caused more than five million deaths worldwide.

More than 7.9 billion doses of different immunizers applied around the world, Coronavac it represents “25% of the world’s production,” since it accounts for “2,000 million injections.” Coronavac was the most used in the start of the vaccination campaign in Brazil, which started the January 17 of this year, and its progress has managed to reduce the number of deaths and infections in the country of South America.

A tough pandemic in Brazil

Nevertheless, Brazil It is one of the countries that has suffered the most from this pandemic, adding more than 22 million cases and close to 616,000 deaths
related to the coronavirus. At the moment there have been three cases of the omicron variant in São Paulo, two in the Federal District of Brasilia and another in Rio Grande do Sul.