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Manila Bulletin devider Philippines devider National devider Sinopharm opts out of COVID-19 vaccine trials in PH; NCR still has highest number of new infections

Sinopharm opts out of COVID-19 vaccine trials in PH; NCR still has highest number of new infections

Published Oct 16, 2020 04:53 pm

China-based pharmaceutical company Sinopharm is no longer interested in conducting Phase III clinical trials of its COVID-19 candidate vaccine in the Philippines, the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) said on Friday.

“Sinopharm has made a change of mind. Before, they said that they want to provide a supply of vaccines as well as to get involved in the clinical trials Phase III in the Philippines,” said DOST Secretary Fortunato Dela Pena in an online forum hosted by the Department of Health (DOH). 

“But later on, they have communicated to us that they are still interested in the supply side but they are no longer going to conduct clinical trials Phase III,” he added. 

There are six pharmaceutical firms that have signed a confidentiality disclosure agreement that would let the Philippines’ vaccine experts panel review the results of their respective Phase 1 and Phase 2 trials. 

These are the Gamaleye Research Institute from Russia, University of Queensland from Australia; Adimmune from Taiwan, and the Sinovac, Sinopharm and Anhui Zhifei Longcom Biopharmaceutical from China. 

Dela Peña also confirmed that China’s Sinovac Biotech has passed the evaluation of the country’s vaccine expert panel but still needs to secure approval from the Single Joint Ethics Research Board and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) before they could commence the Phase III clinical trial of their candidate vaccine. 

“They are just waiting for the approval or endorsement of the Single Joint Ethics Research Board,” said Dela Peña.

“Once they receive the final approval for the clinical trial from our FDA, the implementation will be fully undertaken by their local contract research organization (CRO), that can facilitate and help them in the actual implementation of the vaccine trials,” said the DOST chief. 

“We hope that they will be able to have already selected the contract research organizations. This is Philippine-based organizations,” he added. 

As for Russia's Sputnik V, Dela Peña said that they are still evaluating its application for clinical trials. 

New COVID-19 cases

The DOH, meanwhile, recorded 3,139 new cases of COVID-19 in the country. This pushed the total number of infections to 351,750 since the first case was detected last January. 

Of the total, 50,534 are active cases or patients who are still recuperating. The DOH said that 84.7 percent of the active cases are mild, 10.8 percent are asymptomatic, 1.5 percent are in severe condition, while three percent are in critical condition. 

The majority of the newly confirmed cases were from the National Capital Region with 1,003, Cavite with 206, Rizal with 175, Laguna with 138, and Iloilo with 126 infections.

It was also reported that there were 34 new fatalities, taking the death toll to 6,531. Recoveries, meanwhile, jumped by 786 to 294,865. 

Globally, there have been 38,394,169 confirmed cases of COVID-19, including 1,089,047 deaths,  data from the World Health Organization (WHO) showed. 

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