A Chinese doctor has stunned people around the world by injecting an untested vaccine for the coronavirus.
Scientists in the country have been busily trying to find a way to beat Covid-19, however vaccines can usually take many months to go through testing and animal trials.
But Chen Wei has skipped a few steps by using the untested vaccine on herself.
The 54-year-old stood in front of photographer as a person dressed in full protective gear pumped the liquid into her body.
The world-renowned epidemiologist and a major-general in China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) wanted to show that China was moving quickly with a coronavirus vaccine. It also claimed six members of the team have also been injected with the vaccine.
Pictures of the event were posted on the PLA’s social media account on Weibo, however the post has since been taken down.
Speaking to China’s state-run TV network, Chen said: “We are doing all we can to put the recombinant vaccine that we are developing into clinical application. We must strive to bring the vaccine we are working on to clinical trial and application, providing strong technical support for winning this battle.”
Wei gained headlines around the world when she was one of the people credited with developing the world’s first gene-based vaccine on Ebola in 2014. She was also instrumental in helping combat the SARS outbreak in the early 2000s.
According to Vice, Chen and her team have been working at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which has so far come up with a plasma therapy treatment as well as a nasal spray that could help boost a person’s immunity.
This laboratory is one of many around the world that are trying to find and effective and human-ready vaccine for the virus. Over 95,000 people have been infected with it and more than 3,200 have died.
Some international teams have come up with vaccine candidates, some of which are being tested on animals.
But the concept of skipping animals trials has already been broached by many academics, who think it might be necessary to ensure no one else dies from Covid-19.
Professor Glenn Browning from the University of Melbourne told 10daily: “In a normal situation these things take years and [scientists] are set a very high level of safety and criteria.
“They must provide clear evidence they’ll work. Given how important or dangerous [the situation is] you might have to shorten the pathway and accept you’re not going to take the same level of safety.
“They will take the shortest pathway possible to show it induces an antibody that can stop the virus. This could be quite a quick process, faster than we’ve ever seen before.”
Credit : .ladbible
