While inspecting phase two of the clinical trial of Made-in-Vietnam Covivac vaccine at the medical center of Vu Thu district in Thai Binh province on August 19, the health official said that more vaccines would arrive in Vietnam in the fourth quarter. Vietnam is trying to vaccinate 75% of the population by the end of 2021 and early 2022, he said.

Thuan praised the results of phase 1 trial of Covivac vaccine. He emphasized that the research, development and production of vaccines in Vietnam is one of the important strategies in the country’s pandemic prevention and control.

"The successful research and production of a safe and effective Made in Vietnam Covid-19 vaccine has been identified as an important scientific task to help Vietnam soon become self-sufficient in vaccine sources," Thuan said.

The Covivac vaccine research project started in May 2020. On August 3, the National Ethical Council received the mid-term report of the phase 1 of the clinical trial of Covivac vaccine. The results show that this vaccine is safe and immunogenic, qualifying for phase 2 trial.

On August 7, the National Ethical Council met to approve the phase 2 study project of Covivac vaccine.

The goal of phase 2 is to evaluate which formula and dose of Covivac vaccine is optimal for the next phase of clinical trial research. Safety and immune response will also continue to be evaluated. The mid-term results of phase 2 clinical trials will be available in November.

According to Thuan, if the results are good, phase 3 will be immediately deployed. The results of phase 3 trial will be available in December. If the vaccine proves to be safe and effective, it could be licenced for emergency condition.

Dr. Dang Duc Anh, Director of the Central Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology, said: “The results of the phase 1 study show that all doses in phase 1 are safe and we have selected 2 doses to test in phase 2. Phase 2 is important to select the most appropriate dose, which has a strong and safe immune response, to conduct phase 3 trials.”

Covivac vaccine is produced using embryonic chicken egg technology, which is a widely used traditional flu vaccine production technology. This means that Vietnam already has the capacity to produce the vaccine on a large scale at a reasonable price.

Vietnam has licenced three Covid-19 vaccines for clinical trials, including: NanoCovax (phase 3 at present), Covivac (phase 2) and ARCT-154 (technology transferred by Arcturus Therapeutics, Inc., USA, 100 volunteers injected with the first dose).

Ngoc Trang

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