A batch of COVID-19 vaccines is loaded at the airport in Mexico City, Mexico, on Saturday when Mexico received the first shipment of vaccines made by the Chinese company Sinovac. XIN YUEWEI / XINHUA
When Wu Guizhen and his colleagues at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Beijing received their first sample of an unknown virus on Jan 2,2020, they hurried to identify it.
The sample was collected from a pneumonia patient in Wuhan, Hubei region.
“It’s like when you can’t see the enemy in time of war unless you get a clear picture of a virus when you’re fighting an infectious disease,” said Wu, chief biosecurity expert at CDC China.
In the early days of the COVID-19 revolution, when the disease was described as “pneumonia caused by unknown causes”, Wu and other virologists at the CDC China National Institute for the Control and Prevention of Viral Disease did not -ever busier. The virologists worked around the clock to study the sample using the latest technology. Some of them slept in their workplace for days, she said.
In less than a week, on January 7, Chinese CDC researchers had isolated a new coronavirus from the sample.
The next day, a team of experts from the National Health Commission gave initial confirmation that the novel coronavirus was the cause of the disease in Wuhan. The next day, China shared the information with the World Health Organization.
“Early identification of a novel virus in a short period of time is a remarkable achievement,” the WHO said in a statement on January 9. “Novel virus pre-diagnosis will help authorities in other countries to detect and respond to diseases. “
At the same time, China CDC began releasing data on the virus, and the genome sequence of the virus was made available for global access through the Global Initiative on the sharing of all influenza data. big on Jan 10, Wu said.
In the following days, two other Chinese institutions – the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences released data on the genome sequencing of the virus to the platform for global distribution, she said.
Timely dissemination of information on the novel coronavirus greatly enabled the research and development of COVID-19 vaccines worldwide, which have “miraculously” market-approved vaccines within a year of infection. recognition, Wu said.
“After the release of the genome sequence, each country was able to take out test kits for the virus, or test and develop vaccines,” Wu said. “It also laid the foundation for research in tracing the origin of the virus, monitoring its mutation movements and discovering how the virus causes illness.”
For example, BNT162b2, which was one of the earliest COVID-19 vaccines available for use, was developed shortly after the information was released. The RNA vaccine was developed by pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and German company BioNTech, and was approved for emergency use in the UK in December.
“The development of BNT162b2 was initiated on Jan 10, 2020, when the SARS-CoV-2 genetic sequence was released by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention and distributed worldwide with the GISAID initiative,” he said. a paper published in New England. Journal of Medicine in December.
Wu said “information sharing is a major contribution China has made to the global fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.” She said that such sharing, including source discovery, was initiated by WHO and the international community, at the onset of the disease.
Wu Zunyou, chief epidemiologist at China CDC, said in an earlier interview with China Daily that China’s rapid identification of the pathogen and the development of test equipment played an important role in the rapid detection of epilepsy in China.
The global division of the genome sequence has greatly contributed to the global fight against the pandemic. “We did not apply for patents for the research and instead did it for free in the public interest,” Wu said.