As work on developing a vaccine is continuing in China, Chief Virologist Wu Zunyou said people in China planning to travel during the upcoming National Day holiday do not need to take additional precautions against the coronavirus as the disease is no longer circulating in society. Currently, on the Chinese mainland, the virus can only be found in hospitalized patients, people placed under medical observation and laboratories, Wu, Chief Epidemiologist at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said during an interview with China Central Television. “It is now impossible to contract the virus in social environments, including schools and workplaces,” he said.

This year’s National Day Holiday will run from October 1 to 8, one day longer than usual as it overlaps with the Mid-Autumn Festival, which also falls on October 1 this year. Tourist agencies have predicted a surge in domestic travel during the eight-day holiday as the outbreak has been suppressed in the country and most travel restrictions have been lifted. No new locally transmitted infections have been reported on the Chinese mainland for more than 30 consecutive days.

CanSino Biologics’ top scientist Zhu Tao said that its vaccine candidate for Covid-19 jointly developed by the company and military biomedical expert Chen Wei is generally safe and effective, and no serious adverse reactions that require medical attention have been reported. The Chinese recombinant adenovirus vector vaccine, Ad5-nCoV, uses a weakened and modified common cold virus as a vector to introduce parts of the genetic material of the novel coronavirus into the body, training it to recognize and fight off the disease. Zhu said the Ad5-nCoV is expected to provide two years of protection, and one dose is enough to trigger an adequate immune response.

China’s only nasal spray vaccine against the novel coronavirus is expected to start phase I clinical trials in November, and 100 volunteer recipients are being recruited, meaning that all five technical routes of vaccines against the disease that China has introduced will be in clinical trials. It is the only vaccine of its type approved by China’s National Medical Products Administration. China has approved 10 coronavirus vaccines for clinical trials. This nasal spray vaccine is a collaborative mission between Hong Kong and the Chinese mainland that involves researchers from the University of Hong Kong, Xiamen University and Beijing Wantai Biological Pharmacy. Leading microbiologist from the University of Hong Kong Yuen Kwok-yung told the Global Times that the vaccine simulates the natural infection pathway of respiratory viruses to activate the immune response. The nasal spray vaccination could generate double protection for vaccine recipients – influenza and the coronavirus. The nasal spray vaccine uses live attenuated influenza vaccine; the other four technical routes China is using to develop coronavirus vaccines are inactivated vaccines, adenoviral vector-based vaccines, and DNA and mRNA vaccines. The inactivated vaccine is estimated to be the earliest to be on the market.

Quarantine policies for international travelers to Shanghai with their final destination in neighboring Jiangsu, Zhejiang or Anhui provinces have changed. While the total length of quarantine for inbound passengers remains 14 days, people traveling to the three neighboring provinces and testing negative after three days of quarantine in Shanghai – instead of the previous seven days – will be transferred to their city of destination to finish the last 11 days of quarantine in designated places. Inbound travelers whose destination is within Shanghai are still allowed to do a seven-day hotel quarantine plus a seven-day home quarantine if they have a fixed residence in the city, a negative nucleic acid test on the fifth day of the hotel quarantine and mandatory home quarantine for those living in the same apartment.

Travelers from Belgium to China need to note that starting from September 2, the validity period of the negative Covid-19 test certificate was shortened from 5 to 3 days after its issuance for all passengers traveling from or transiting via Belgium to China. This means that travelers need to pass a test and obtain a negative certificate within three days before departure. Foreigners need to present the test result to the Chinese Embassy in Brussels to obtain a Health Certificate to be allowed to board the plane to China.

China has reported no new Covid-19 cases for more than 14 days, but there are still a dozen or so cases a day of arriving passengers, detected carrying the virus during their 14-day quarantine period. Meanwhile, the number of Covid-19 cases in Belgium has surpassed the number in China, while there are twice as many deaths in Belgium.

Urumqi, capital city of Xinjiang, lifted the lockdown after 37 days to allow residents of some local communities where there have been no Covid-19 patients to engage in outdoor activities within the community as infections have gradually subsided. In response to difficulties that locals had during the long lockdown, major officials in Urumqi released their phone numbers, allowing them to hear residents’ anxiety and help solve their problems. The easing is a sign that the Covid-19 resurgence is gradually subsiding and Urumqi is expected to return to normality soon after the city locked all communities and required residents to stay indoors from July 17. As another easing sign, some domestic airlines serving Xinjiang started to resume operations, including some flights to Beijing, Shanghai and Hangzhou. Travelers need a green health QR code and negative nucleic acid test to board the flights, the Global Times reports.

Hong Kong plans to start mass testing on September 1. The number of daily cases has been dropping in the past week, from a peak of 149 in late July to around 10 to 20 in recent days. But restrictions and social distancing measures still have a serious impact on the economy of Hong Kong. A total of 141 sites across 18 districts have been prepared as makeshift testing facilities. “For yourself, your loved ones, our hardworking medical staff and the wider community, you should join the testing,” Secretary for the Civil Service Patrick Nip said. Those who test negative for Covid-19 would receive their results via text message within three days of screening, while those testing positive would get a call from the Department of Health. The Hong Kong government had conducted 950,000 tests since January, and had recently performed 420,000 tests on high-risk groups – such as taxi drivers and care home staff. The mass testing scheme is aimed at detecting the remaining silent carriers of the virus. About 600 staff from the mainland will assist in testing. But Professor Yuen Kwok-yung, who advises the government on the pandemic, says infections could spike again as temperatures fall. He called for ‘watertight’ border controls, and for people to record their own movements to facilitate contact tracing in the event of infection. Hong Kong could face a fourth wave of Covid-19 infections in the autumn and winter season, and disruptions to normal life could persist for another six months to a year, he added.

Shanghai’s Fosun Pharma is on track to bring German partner BioNTech’s mRNA Covid-19 vaccine to China by the end of the year. Fosun has injected 72 volunteers with BioNTech’s vaccine in a phase-one trial in Jiangsu province, and the preliminary safety data are ‘good’, said CEO Wu Yifang. “We hope to be able to commercialize it by year end, but there are plenty of uncertainties with clinical trials as well as the regulatory approval processes,” Wu added. Fosun Pharma, part of the Shanghai-based conglomerate Fosun International, in March obtained a license from Mainz-based BioNTech to exclusively develop and commercialize its mRNA Covid-19 vaccine in mainland China, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan. U.S.-based Pfizer is working with BioNTech to commercialize it outside China, and is conducting phase 2 and 3 clinical trials in the U.S. where it has won “fast track” designation from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). They plan to supply up to 100 million doses worldwide by the end of this year and 1.3 billion by the end of 2021. RNA vaccines are faster and cheaper to produce than traditional vaccines, and an RNA-based vaccine is also safer for the patient as they are not produced using infectious elements.

Meanwhile, the Canadian National Research Council (NRC) confirmed a planned clinical trial of the Ad5-nCov vaccine developed by CanSino had been scrapped due to delays in shipping the vaccine. The NRC said it was now working with Massachusetts-based VBI Vaccines and the University of Saskatchewan’s International Vaccine Center. Phase three trials of Ad5-nCoV are now under way in Saudi Arabia and Russia. The Chinese military has already approved the use of the vaccine candidate on armed forces personnel.

An inactivated Covid-19 vaccine developed by the China National Pharmaceutical Group (Sinopharm) will likely come on the market by the end of December, at a price of less than CNY1,000 for two shots. The marketing review procedure will start after overseas phase III clinical trials are completed, Chairman Liu Jingzhen said. Not all 1.4 billion Chinese people need to be vaccinated, Liu added, suggesting that students and those working in cities should take the injections, while people who live in rural areas with comparatively smaller populations do not have to. Sinopharm started to offer free voluntary injections to front-line medical workers in some state-owned hospitals on an urgent basis in late July. Some employees of SOEs preparing to go abroad were also offered Sinopharm’s inactivated vaccine for urgent use as early as June. Getting vaccinated would be free for Chinese citizens if the vaccine is included in the national immunization program, which covers 14 injections against 15 diseases like polio and hepatitis B. A workshop in Beijing able to produce 120 million doses per year has passed biological safety inspection from the related authorities and is ready for production. Another workshop of Sinopharm in Wuhan is able to produce 100 million doses per year.

The China National Biotec Group (CNBG) announced it will start its Phase Ⅲ clinical trials of Covid-19 vaccines in Peru and Morocco, after obtaining certificates to launch trials in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain. Another vaccine maker, CanSino Biologics, has reportedly reached a deal with the Mexican government.

Meanwhile, the American Chamber of Commerce received permission to fly business executives to China on a chartered flight on September 12, but tight restrictions remain on those allowed to re-enter China. Almost 200 people signed up for a San Francisco to Beijing charter flight. The Chamber said that only those who were employed by member companies who had received a letter of invitation, known as a PU letter, would be allowed on the flight. They also must obtain a valid re-entry visa. Family members will be permitted to travel with the employee, but all passengers will be required to pass a Covid-19 test before boarding and must enter quarantine upon arrival. The price of the flight operated by United Airlines is expected to be “competitive with current commercial rates”, with economy class seats starting at USD4,300 and business class seats starting at USD10,000. AmCham China estimates that between 5,000 and 10,000 members of the U.S. business community are currently stuck overseas, while the European Chamber’s Shanghai chapter said 56% of companies have staff stuck overseas. The German Chamber of Commerce has previously been able to arrange a charter flight for members, which landed in Tianjin in late May. Around 950,000 foreigners in China have permission to work in China, the South China Morning Post reports.

The U.S. Department of Transportation has decided to double the number of flights to China to eight per week, equivalent to the total number of flights now permitted by Chinese aviation authorities to U.S. carriers. That means the number of international flights between China and the U.S. are expected to increase from the current eight flights to 16 flights per week. The two U.S. carriers currently operating passenger flights to China – United Airlines and Delta Air Lines – were granted operating permission by the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) to increase their service frequency from two times a week to four. VariFlight said that in September 72 routes have been planned to depart from 14 cities in the U.S., compared with 70 routes in 17 cities in China, which means the carriers in the two countries have submitted a total of 142 flight plans, much more than the number of flights approved by the two countries’ regulators. There were around 100 flights a week between the two countries before the pandemic.

As of August 12, China maintained regular passenger traffic with 50 countries, and altogether 93 airlines, including 19 domestic and 74 foreign companies, have been operating 210 weekly return frequencies on 187 international passenger routes, the CAAC said.

Chinese authorities have granted the first invention patent to a domestically developed Covid-19 vaccine candidate. The vaccine is a recombinant adenovirus vaccine named Ad5-nCoV, co-developed by Chinese biopharmaceutical firm CanSino Biologics and a team led by Chinese military infectious disease expert Chen Wei. The grant of the patent confirmed the vaccine’s efficacy and safety, and convincingly demonstrated the ownership of its intellectual property rights (IPR), CanSino said in a statement to the Global Times. CanSino applied for a patent with the National Intellectual Property Administration (NIPA) on March 18, three days after launching phase one clinical trials, and received approval on August 11. The phase III trial is now progressing smoothly abroad. China and Russia planned to collaborate on Covid-19 vaccine clinical trials.

Covid-19 vaccines must have an efficacy rate of at least 50% and provide at least six months’ immunity if they are to be approved for use in China by the Chinese Center for Drug Evaluation (CCDE), which added in a document that it would consider granting emergency use of vaccines that have not yet completed the final phase of clinical trials. Chinese companies are among the forerunners in the race to produce a vaccine for Covid-19, with four candidates in final testing. Last week, China issued several documents setting out the standards for clinical trials and research on vaccines, including those based on the unproven mRNA platform. Four Chinese vaccine candidates are undergoing clinical trials in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Brazil, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia. Those countries were chosen as China no longer has enough cases to put the products to the test. The trials are, however, smaller than the usual size of 20,000 to 40,000 patients, so more locations might be sought at a later date.

One of the most promising Covid-19 vaccines will be available in China as a result of a licensing deal between AstraZeneca and Shenzhen Kangtai Biological Products. This agreement means that five out of the six vaccines that are currently undergoing phase 3 human trials will be available in the country. The vaccine, jointly developed with Oxford University’s Jenner Institute, has shown promising results in early trials, with volunteers producing a strong immune response without serious adverse effects. Under the deal, Kangtai will have exclusive clinical development, production and commercialization rights to the vaccine in China. “BioKangtai will ensure the annual production capacity of the Covid-19 vaccine AZD1222 can reach at least 100 million doses by the end of 2020, and expand capacity to at least 200 million doses by the end of 2021 to meet the demands of the Chinese market,” AstraZeneca said in a statement. Other Chinese companies have already agreed to deals with foreign companies to secure access to Covid-19 vaccines. In March, Shanghai Fosun Pharma bought the exclusive collaboration and commercial rights in China for a vaccine from German bio start-up BioNTech. BioNTech is currently conducting phase 2 and 3 trials for the vaccine with Pfizer outside China and a phase 1 trial for safety and immune responses inside China. In January, U.S. firm Inovio Pharmaceuticals announced that it was partnering with Beijing-based Advaccine for clinical trials of a vaccine and would seek regulatory approval to enter the Chinese market, the South China Morning Post reports.

Shares of Tianjin-based CanSino Biologics, China’s first drug maker to start human trials of a Covid-19 vaccine, shot up by 124% on their debut in the Star Market. The company will use the proceeds to build a vaccine manufacturing base and fund Covid-19 vaccine research. Shares always soar on the first day of trading on the Star Market, which, unlike other Chinese trading boards, has no limit on how much they can rise or fall in the first week of trading, making them especially profitable bets. The average first-day gain on the Star Market is 167%, according to data provider jrj.com. CanSino, which raised CNY5.2 billion by floating 24.8 million shares on the Star Market at the Shanghai Stock Exchange, is the second most expensive initial public offering (IPO) on the mainland, trailing only Beijing Roborock Technology, a robot cleaner maker that began trading on the Star Market in February. According to China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), a total of 13 enterprises in China have launched construction of assembly lines to produce Covid-19 vaccines as of July 23, while nine Chinese enterprises have received regulatory approval to start clinical vaccine trials.

Urumqi, capital city of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, re-mains on high alert against Covid-19 and is giving repeated nucleic acid tests to people at high risk of infection, although the number of cases in the city is showing a downward trend and has fallen to single digits per day. Single-day new infections in Xinjiang peaked near the end of July, reaching as high as 112 on July 30 and have since been declining. In Hong Kong, a cluster linked to the Kwai Tsing Container Terminals, kept growing. So far, 65 confirmed cases were linked to Hong Kong’s biggest container terminal. Hong Kong is recruiting some 2,000 people with medical knowledge to help with mass testing, which will start on August 31 and last for two weeks. Social-distancing measures have also been extended by one week. The city has registered 4,525 infections and 69 deaths so far.

With at least nine Chinese cities reporting cases of imported frozen products contaminated with the coronavirus since early July, authorities are taking measures to prevent further such incidents. Officials in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, confirmed that a sample of frozen chicken wings imported from Brazil tested positive, while some packaging samples from frozen shrimp tested positive in Xian, Shaanxi province. China’s customs authority suspended imports from three Ecuadorean shrimp producers on July 10 after samples collected from the outer packaging of shrimps and the interior of a container in which they were shipped tested positive for the virus in Xiamen, Fujian province, and Dalian, Liaoning province. Michael Ryan, Executive Director of the Health Emergencies Program at the World Health Organization (WHO), said in Geneva that: “People should not fear food or food packaging, or the processing or delivery of food. There is no evidence that food or the food chain is participating in transmission of this virus. Our food, from a Covid perspective, is safe.” Zhu Yi, Associate Professor at China Agricultural University’s College of Food Science and Nutrition Engineering, said that the contamination actually has nothing to do with the food or packaging. The key is the cold-chain temperature in which viruses can survive, Zhu said, as reported by the China Daily.

China made another breakthrough in battling the coronavirus pandemic as an inactivated Covid-19 vaccine production plant of the Beijing Institute of Biological Products has passed national examination. The facility was granted a production certificate and it is now available for use, its parent China National Biotech Group (CNBG) said. The Beijing institute took only two months to finish building the facility on April 15. Related government departments conducted a thorough biosecurity examination of the production workshop in July, and concluded the facility met national standards, and could go into operation for mass production of Covid-19 vaccines. After the Beijing manufacturing workshop and another production facility belonging to CNBG’s Wuhan Institute of Biological Products begin operations, CNBG will be capable of ensuring an annual capacity of 220 million doses of vaccines to first immunize medical staff and personnel working at airports and border checkpoints. “It is possible that China could have a Covid-19 vaccine as early as the end of October as some domestically made Covid-19 vaccines have entered phase three clinical trials and need about a month to observe their effects on samples,” Tao Lina, a Shanghai-based vaccine researcher, told the Global Times. After securing a certain amount of vaccine for China’s strategic reserves, exports can be considered, Tao noted, adding countries such as the Philippines and Brazil are potential destinations.

Sinopharm’s candidate vaccine is already being tested in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) with 15,000 local volunteers, including UAE nationals and expatriates, since mid July. Sinopharm is the parent company of CNBG. In another major step, German firm BioNTech and its Chinese partner Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical announced that 72 trial participants have received doses of BNT162b1, a Covid-19 vaccine candidate based on BioNTech’s mRNA technology, following the Chinese regulators’ examination and approval. In another sign of progress, scientists from the Hong Kong and Macao Special Administrative Regions announced a breakthrough in the development of a recombinant Covid-19 vaccine, envisioning the vaccine’s mass production to be feasible at a low cost in the future. A Spokesperson for the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in late July that China has 13 firms that have begun capacity building for Covid-19 vaccines, and nine have been approved to start clinical trials, the Global Times reports.

China’s Covid-19 testing capacity can fully meet domestic demand with a very high accuracy rate, authorities said. According to MIIT, China’s daily Covid-19 nucleic acid testing capacity hit 4.84 million at the end of July, with 4,946 institutions and more than 38,000 technical staff now capable of carrying out tests. Nearly 200 million testing kits and 12,000 testing machines have been distributed nationwide. The number far exceeds daily tests run by the U.S. According to the Coronavirus Resource Center of John Hopkins University, the highest daily test capacity in the past three months in the U.S. was only 920,000. By comparison, China’s testing capacity has successfully met the demand of 10 million people in Wuhan, and more than 20 million in Beijing. The current capacity is enough to test “everyone that wants to get tested” and “everyone who needs to be tested,” according to Bao Xianhua, an official from China’s Ministry of Science and Technology. Apart from traditional testing kits, China has focused on the development of rapid testing kits. According to China’s National Products Administration, it has thus far approved 44 Covid-19 testing kits from 36 enterprises, including seven rapid ones. The current fastest Covid-19 testing kit in China provides results in 30 minutes, and the overall accuracy rate of nucleic acid testing in the country has reached 95%. Rapid testing kits are among China’s top development priorities, with further kits expected to receive approval by the fall. As of July 7, around 20 publicly-listed companies are not only producing testing kits in China, but also exporting them overseas, the Global Times reports.

According to epidemiologists, the Covid-19 cases in Dalian were imported. The possibility of clustered infections in Dalian being caused by domestic cases can be preliminarily ruled out, as the cases have been found to be unrelated to those discovered in Beijing and Xinjiang, local authorities said. Zhao Zuowei, Director of the Dalian Health Commission, said at a press conference that gene sequencing showed that the virus which caused the infections is different from that circulating domestically. Experts are working on tracing the source of the particular strain. The infections likely started in the Dalian Kaiyang Seafood Company’s processing workshops on July 9 and rapidly spread among the workshops before spreading outside. The outbreak occurred in a comparatively limited area without leading to wider community transmission, Zhao noted. The expansion of Covid-19 cases in Urumqi has also been contained.

In Hong Kong, 69 new cases were confirmed on August 10, bringing the total to 4,148 with 55 related deaths. The Hong Kong government also revealed it would extend existing social-distancing measures, including a ban on gatherings of more than two people, and mandatory mask-wearing in public places, until August 18.

This overview is based on reports by the Global Times, South China Morning Post, China Daily and Shanghai Daily.