(Reuters) – Chinese vaccine-maker CanSino Biologics said on Tuesday domestic bureaucratic indecision was the reason behind the failure of a coronavirus vaccine partnership with Canada, the Globe and Mail reported, citing the company’s chief executive officer.
CanSino in May had agreed to bring its vaccine candidate to Canada for testing through a partnership with the National Research Council (NRC). (https://bit.ly/2EDnvga)
However, decisions in China on whether to send the vaccine to Canada were “caught in the bureaucracy”, and some divisions of the Chinese government were not clear if the vaccine should “go to global trials or how to handle it”, chairman and CEO of CanSino Biologics, Dr Xuefeng Yu, told the Globe and Mail in an interview. (https://tgam.ca/3bavWMx)
The report quoted the NRC as saying it had moved on to focus on other partners and COVID-19 priorities due to delay in the shipment of the vaccine doses.
NRC and CanSino did not immediately respond to Reuters’ request for a comment.
CanSino’s vaccine candidate is one of the few being tested in a late-stage study, as companies race to develop a safe and effective vaccine for COVID-19.
(Reporting by Vishwadha Chander in Bengaluru)
