The trial will test the efficacy of combining an
"inactivated" vaccine made by China's Sinovac with a DNA-based one
developed by US pharmaceutical company Inovio, a statement issued on Tuesday
said.
The statement was put out by Advaccine Biopharmaceuticals
Suzhou, Inovio's trial partner in China.
Preclinical work has found that "two different vaccine
applications... produce an even stronger and more balanced immune
response", Advaccine chairman Wang Bin said in the statement.
There are several types of Covid vaccines, including those
using an inactivated or weakened virus to generate an immune response, and more
cutting-edge RNA- or DNA-based jabs that use engineered versions of the
coronavirus' genetic code to create a protein that safely prompts an immune
response.
Five out of the seven vaccines approved in China are
two-shot inactivated vaccines.
Their published efficacy lags RNA jabs by Pfizer-BioNTech
and Moderna, which have pre-Delta success rates above 90 percent.
The World Health Organization has said there is still not
enough data to say whether using two different vaccines together is safe or can
boost immunity.
Inovio has not published any efficacy data from its global
clinical trials. It is the first DNA-based vaccine to be trialled in China.
China is battling its worst coronavirus outbreak in months,
with officials saying many of those infected had already been vaccinated.
This has added to calls for China's two biggest vaccine
producers -- state-run Sinopharm and privately owned Sinovac -- to provide data
proving their jabs work against the Delta variant.
Beijing is yet to approve any foreign vaccines for domestic
use.
AFP