SARS vaccine comes through first round of tests
Chinese researchers have completed a first round of testing on an experimental SARS vaccine and declared it safe.
The 36 volunteers in the study were injected with the vaccine 56 days ago and “did not report any abnormal physical reactions”, the official Xinhua News Agency said, citing Wang Xiaofang, an official from the Ministry of Science and Technology.
The test was aimed at determining the safety of the vaccine, Xinhua said. It said the vaccine would not be available to the public unless two more rounds of testing were successful. Xinhua did not say when or how tests would be carried out to determine the vaccine’s effectiveness.
China has been working since last year on a vaccine to prevent severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), which first emerged in south China in late 2002.
The disease killed 349 people on China’s mainland and affected thousands all over the world before subsiding in July 2003. Another person died in April in China during a brief outbreak traced to a Beijing laboratory that handled the virus.
The volunteers in the first-round test were 18 men and 18 women aged 21 to 40, Xinhua said, citing researcher Lin Jiangtao, a professor at the Sino-Japanese Friendship Hospital in Beijing.
