After the success of the first trial of the bird-flu vaccine on humans, China is all set to conduct the second trial for which it requires 400 volunteers. The second stage of the trial will focus on measuring the duration of protection afforded by the vaccine in the human body against the lethal H5N1 strain. It is required that the vaccine undergoes three phases of trial before being considered safe for administration.
In the first round, nearly 120 people got the vaccination shots, which did not trigger any adverse reaction, except for mild fever in few cases, an acceptable reaction to any vaccine.The trial would require volunteers between the ages of 18 to 65, but people older than 65 or pregnant women will not be allowed to participate in the trial.
The vaccine developed by Sinovac Biotech Limited and the Ministry of Science and Technology and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, has plans of enlarging the capacity of their production unit, to enable huge quantities of human bird-flu vaccine, after the envisaged two rounds of trials prove successful.
Source-Medindia
SAV
