Controversy over domestic drugmaker Medigen’s COVID-19 vaccine could have been avoided had the company published data on its phase 2 clinical trials in international journals, National Taiwan University (NTU) College of Public Health vice dean Tony Chen (陳秀熙) said yesterday.
The government on Sunday granted emergency use authorization (EUA) to the Medigen jab after an expert panel said that antibody levels in the blood of phase 2 trial participants met local standards.
However, critics said that the experts’ reasoning was not convincing because not all trial data had been publicized and that Taiwan is the only country to conditionally approve a vaccine that has not yet passed phase 3 clinical trials.
Medigen on Tuesday said it had received approval to conduct phase 3 trials on 1,000 people in Paraguay.
Chen yesterday said that the Paraguay trials’ methodology and safety precautions would be well within international standards, but whether the vaccine could provide sufficient protection, especially against highly infectious variants of SARS-CoV-2, could only be determined with additional trials.
Chen said that he believes the expert panels’ assessment on which the EUA is based, but that the company lacks sufficient credibility based on publication in scientific journals.
“Trial data of the COVID-19 vaccines that are in use worldwide — AstraZeneca, Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, Johnsons & Johnson and Novavax, among others — have been published in credible international journals,” Chen said, adding that this, not the transparency of the approval process in various countries, gives them credibility.
Even China last year publicized the phase 2 trial results of the Sinovac COVID-19 vaccine, he said.
The publication of trial data is a critical step that the Medigen vaccine must take, Chen said, adding that verification by the international medical community would be crucial to calm the worries of Taiwanese.
Taoyuan Mayor Cheng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦) and Tainan Mayor Huang Wei-che (黃偉哲), both of the Democratic Progressive Party, have said that they would be willing to receive the Medigen vaccine as their second shot, while New Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has said that the jab’s efficacy should first be determined by the scientific community, not by politics.
Transparency is key to winning public support, Hou said, adding that public support is key to whether the Medigen jab would become widely accepted.
Additional reporting by Lai Hsiao-tung
Two people were killed and another nine injured yesterday after being stung by hornets while hiking in New Taipei City’s Rueifang District (瑞芳), with officials warning against wearing perfume or straying from trails during the autumn to avoid the potentially deadly creatures. Seven of the hikers only sustained minor injuries after being stung along the Bafenliao Hiking Trail (八分寮) and made their way down the mountain with a guide, the New Taipei City Fire Department said. Four of them — all male — sustained more serious injuries and were assisted when leaving the mountain, the department said. Two of them, a man surnamed
Recent movements by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) have been “highly unusual,” but the military maintains a grasp of the situation, Minister of National Defense Chiu Kuo-cheng (邱國正) said on Friday, after the military for the first time said it was monitoring troop movements in China’s Dacheng Bay (大埕灣). The minister gave the remarks to reporters before appearing at the legislature on the first day of its new session. The Ministry of National Defense on Thursday evening released an air force surveillance photograph of a PLA Shaanxi Y-8 anti-submarine aircraft, and said it was monitoring the PLA Rocket Force and ground
‘ABNORMITY’: News of the military exercises on the coast of the Chinese province facing Taiwan were made public by the Ministry of National Defense on Thursday Taiwan’s military yesterday said it has detected the Chinese military initiating a round of exercises at a bay area in coastal Fujian Province, which faces Taiwan, since early yesterday morning and it has been closely monitoring the drills. The exercises being conducted at Fujian’s Dacheng Bay featured an undisclosed number of People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) warplanes, warships and ground troops, the Ministry of National Defense said in a press statement. The ministry did not disclose what kind of military exercises are being conducted there and for how long they would be happening, but it did say that it has been closely watching
China’s Office of the Commissioner of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Hong Kong has asked foreign consulates in Hong Kong to submit details of their local staff, which is more proof that the “one country, two systems” model no longer exists, a Taiwanese academic said. The office sent letters dated Monday last week to consulates in the territory, giving them one month to submit the information it requires. The move followed Beijing’s attempt to obtain floor plans for all properties used by foreign missions in Hong Kong last year, which raised concerns among diplomats that the information could be used for
RSS