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Showing posts with label New York Times. Show all posts
Showing posts with label New York Times. Show all posts

Saturday, May 8, 2021

WHO approval of Chinese vaccine will largely accelerate COVAX supply; Chinese vaccines top safety ranking

 

China's Sinopharm vaccine approved by WHO for global use https://newseu.cgtn.com/news/2021-05-07/Sinopharm-vaccine-approved-by-WHO-for-global-use-104LK27VVcc/index.html via @cgtnofficial 
 
 

The WHO's emergency approval of China's COVID-19 vaccine will boost global vaccine supply amid shortfall as China's overall yearly production capacity is approaching five billion doses, observers said.

The WHO gave Emergency Use Listing (EUL) to Sinopharm's COVID-19 vaccine on Friday afternoon, making it the sixth vaccine and the first made by a non-Western country to receive WHO validation for its safety, efficacy and quality. This will send a statement to Western media's doubts and questions over the vaccine's authenticity, observers noted.

The other five COVID-19 vaccines previously approved by the WHO were made by Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson and Moderna.

The approval allows Sinopharm to become a qualified supplier to the COVAX platform that aims to provide two billion doses to developing countries and regions by the end of 2021. As of Friday, 54 million doses had been delivered to 121 participants of the program.

India was supposed to deliver one billion shots through COVAX, but the plan has been halted due to the ongoing severe outbreak in the country.

With a huge supply-demand gap, the world is in urgent need for Chinese vaccines. In most low-income regions, Chinese vaccines are the only choice they have. This comes as the US and Europe are busy grabbing and overbuying shots for themselves, experts said.

The emergency approval for Chinese vaccines will largely expand COVAX supply as China's production is likely to reach five billion doses by the end of this year, Tao Lina, a Shanghai-based vaccine expert, told the Global Times on Saturday.

Chinese manufacturers are already providing vaccines to about 80 countries. The Global Times learned from Sinovac, another Chinese manufacturer whose COVID-19 vaccine is undergoing WHO review for EUL and the result is scheduled to come out next week, that they had produced 300 million doses as of April 28 with about 60 percent being delivered overseas.

On Thursday, Sinopharm announced the completion of phase-three construction of its production factory for the Beijing institute vaccine. It is the world's largest COVID-19 vaccine production factory and will ramp up the group's production capacity to three billion per year.

Sinovac has said that their production capacity will reach two billion doses per year after their production factory is completed in June.

Some experts have expressed concerns over challenges in delivery and application. Especially due to the underdeveloped infrastructure in most developing regions, but Chinese manufacturers are making efforts to tackle these challenges.

The Sinopharm product is an inactivated vaccine called SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine (Vero Cell) that can be delivered through common cold chain with temperatures between 2 C and 8 C. While Moderna vaccine has to be stored in a temperature of at least -20 C, while the Pfizer vaccine at -70 C.

Sinopharm vaccine's easy storage requirements make it highly suitable for low-resource settings, WHO said in a statement on Friday.

It is also the first vaccine that will carry a vaccine vial monitor. The vial monitor is a small sticker on the vaccine vial that change color when the vaccine is exposed to heat, letting health workers know whether the vaccine can be safely used, according to the statement.

The sticker clearly shows the degree of over exposure to high temperatures and ensure the safety of the vaccine's application in different environments, Tao said.

China can assist regions with unsatisfactory infrastructure conditions with cold-chain vehicles as well as training for health workers on vaccination, experts noted.

Some foreign news medias had long been questioning the efficacy and safety of the Sinopharm vaccine due to fewer data on its clinical trials. The data had not been released until the latest document uploaded by the WHO on the assessment of Sinopharm's vaccine.

The WHO document confirms experts have an "overall confidence" in its ability to prevent COVID-19, while having "low confidence" on the risk of side effects for older patients.

WHO said in the Friday statement that they are not recommending an upper age limit for the vaccine because preliminary data and supportive immunogenicity data suggest the vaccine is likely to have a protective effect in older people. "There is no theoretical reason to believe that the vaccine has a different safety profile in older and younger populations."

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In the safety ranking, the top four are all Chinese vaccines

 -  reported by The New York Times on Feb 5, 2021.

 
 1. Sinopharm (China)
 2. Sinovac (China)
 3. Kexing (China)
 4. Can Sino (China)
 5. AstraZeneca (UK)
 6. Pfizer (United States and Germany)
 7. Modena (United States)
 8. Johnson & Johnson (United States)
 9. Novavax (United States)
 10. Satellite 5 (Russia)
 Sinopharm has two vaccines, ranking first and second respectively.
 
China has exported more than 500 million doses of vaccines to more than 50 countries around the world, and it is estimated that hundreds of millions of people have been vaccinated. And China's vaccine accident rate is lower and safer.
 
 As reported by Western media, many wealthy people in Britain fly to the UAE to vaccinate Chinese national medicine.

 
 
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Tuesday, August 19, 2014

USA Today: US print newspapers break-ups without financial support


Washington (AFP) - Following an unprecedented series of spinoffs by major US media companies, the print news industry now faces a rocky future without financial support from deep-pocketed parent firms. 

The wave of corporate breakups comes with newspapers and magazines struggling in a transition to digital news, and shareholders of media conglomerates increasingly intolerant of the lagging print segment.

Gannett, publisher of USA Today and dozens of other newspapers, became the latest to unveil its plan, splitting its print and broadcast operations into two separate units in a move to "sharpen" the focus of each.

This follows the recently completed spinoff by Tribune Co. of its newspaper group, which includes the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune, and Time Warner's separation of its magazine publishing group Time Inc.

Two other newspaper groups, EW Scripps and Journal Communications, announced last month they would merge and then spin off their combined newspaper operations while creating a separate entity focused on broadcasting and digital media.

The trend arguably took hold last year with Rupert Murdoch's split of his empire into separate firms focused on media-entertainment and publishing -- 21st Century Fox and the newly structured News Corp.

- 'Cast out of house' -

The wave of spinoffs "certainly plays into the perception that these are children being cast out of the house by their parents," said Mark Jurkowitz, associate director of the Pew Research Center's Journalism Project.

Newspapers were snapped up by media groups in an era when print was hugely profitable, but other segments of the media conglomerates are now driving profits, such as local television.

"The market doesn't think much of the newspaper industry's future," Jurkowitz said.

Industry consultant Alan Mutter argues that publicly traded newspaper firms still produce an average profit margin of 16 percent, higher than that of Walmart and Amazon.

But Mutter said on his blog that profits and newsroom staffing have taken a huge hit in recent years, and that newspapers have failed to do enough in the digital arena.

"Rather than reliably 'owning' their audiences as they once did in print, the internal metrics at every newspaper show an increasing dependence on the likes of Google, Facebook and Twitter to generate the traffic that is the lifeblood of any media enterprise," he said.

Dan Kennedy, a journalism professor at Northeastern University, said newspapers are recovering from the negative impact of earlier corporate tie-ups.

"It's really corporate debt and the expectations of Wall Street that have done as much to damage the newspapers business as Craigslist," Kennedy told AFP.

"Newspaper margins are still pretty good. And when you have newspapers owned by private companies without debt, some of them are doing pretty well."

Some analysts say that the breakup of big media firms may force publishers to create ways to connect with readers online. "The real problem with newspaper industry has not been with the dead tree part, it is the failure to monetize the digital eyeballs," Jurkowitz said.

"Unless there is an increase in digital revenue streams it's hard to imaging them getting out of the situation they are in."

The industry is closely watching the efforts of newspapers like the New York Times, which is experimenting with new digital access plans, and the Washington Post, which under new owner Jeff Bezos has boosted online readership to record highs.

- 'Not the death phase' -

Kennedy said that while newspapers may be profitable and an important part of the community, they may not be able to meet Wall Street's expectations for growth.

"It's not a growing business," Kennedy said.

Private owners can still keep the business in the black, said Kennedy, citing the record of Boston Globe's new owner, sports magnate John Henry.

But he said that newspapers need to make considerable investments "to make a smart transition to digital" in the coming years.

Peter Copeland, a former Scripps Howard News Service editor and general manager who now is a media consultant, said the breakups are logical and generally positive for newspapers.

"It's better for the newspapers and TV to be separate," Copeland said. "They were never a match. They are very different businesses."

Now, he said the owners "will be able to focus 100 percent on the newspapers."

Copeland said newspapers may end up severing their corporate ties and going back to their roots of local and private ownership.

"Newspapers always had difficulty" being part of corporate empires, said Copeland.

"I think newspapers are entering another phase. It's not the death phase, it's just another phase in the life cycle." - AFP

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Tuesday, October 30, 2012

China critics 'doomed to failure'

BEIJING (AFP) - China on Monday warned its critics they were "doomed to failure" as Beijing confirmed that Premier Wen Jiabao's family had employed lawyers to help fight The New York Times.

 "There are always some voices in the world who do not want to see China develop and become stronger and they will try any means to smear China and Chinese leaders and try to sow instability in China," said foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei.

"Your scheme is doomed to failure," he added. The official was responding to questions about Wen's decision to hire lawyers to fight claims published by The New York Times last week that his family had owned assets worth $2.7 billion.

"Premier Wen Jiabao's family has entrusted lawyers to release a statement and will continue to clarify the report," the spokesman said.

The South China Morning Post on Sunday printed a statement from Wen's lawyers, saying it was the first time a top Chinese leader had issued a rebuttal to a foreign media report.

Friday's New York Times article came at an especially sensitive time for China, as the Communist Party strives to clean house before a pivotal once-in-a-decade handover of power next month.

Detailing a string of deals, the Times said many relatives of the government's number two - a self-styled man of the people - had become "extraordinarily wealthy" during his years in office. Investments by Wen's son, wife and others spanning the banking, jewellery and telecom sectors were worth at least $2.7 billion according to an analysis of company and regulatory filings from 1992-2012, it said. - AFP

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