Beijing - China plans to mass produce a vaccine to protect humans against the deadly bird flu virus after initial tests indicated it was safe, state media said on Wednesday.
The vaccine's manufacturer, Sinovac Biotech Limited, announced it plans to produce 20 million vaccines annually within the next few years, the Beijing News and Xinhua news agency said.
Results from the first round of trials, which ended in June, showed that the 120 people who were vaccinated had no serious adverse reactions, company officials said this week.
"These results indicate that we should expand our production capabilities to prepare for mass production of the vaccine against a possible bird flu pandemic," a company spokesperson was quoted as saying by Xinhua on Wednesday.
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But the vaccine must undergo two more phases of clinical trials before it is allowed to enter the market, Xinhua said.
The company jointly developed the inoculation with China's ministry of science and technology and the centre for disease control and prevention.
The H5N1 bird flu virus is mainly spread among poultry and occasionally from poultry to humans. But experts fear it could mutate into a form easily transmitted between humans.
About a dozen companies are conducting clinical trials on bird flu vaccines worldwide, Xinhua said.
But the World Health Organisation's top official in China has said vaccines might be useless in the event of a bird flu pandemic as the virus would have mutated.
It was difficult to predict mutations and it could take months to produce a new vaccine after one had occurred, the official has said.
The bird flu virus has killed about 140 people, mostly in Asia, since 2003. It has infected 21 people in China since then, killing 14, according to official figures. - Sapa-AFP
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