The race by powerful countries to see who will come up with a Covid-19 vaccine has gone a notch higher.
Chinese authorities have now granted the first invention patent to a domestically developed Covid-19 vaccine candidate, according to the CGTN.
Experts say this demonstrates the vaccine's originality and creativity and would enhance the international market's trust in Chinese developed Covid-19 medicine.
The recombinant adenovirus vaccine, named Ad5-nCoV, is co-developed by Chinese biopharmaceutical firm CanSino Biologics Inc and a team led by Chinese military infectious disease expert Chen Wei.
The grant of the patent, further confirmed the vaccine's efficacy and safety and demonstrated the ownership of its intellectual property rights (IPR), CanSino said in a statement on Sunday.
Covid-19 was first discovered late last year in Wuhan, China.
India is ready to mass produce Covid-19 vaccines when scientists give the go-ahead. India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in his Independence Day speech last Saturday. Modi said three coronavirus vaccines are being tested in India.
Russian President Vladimir Putin recently announced the development of the world's first vaccine against the novel coronavirus, adding that his daughter had already been vaccinated.
The first batch of the vaccine, which was developed by Russia's Gamaleya Research Institute, will be produced and be ready for use in two weeks, according to local media reports last week that quoted Health minister Mikhail Murashko.
The Ministry of Health said it was ready to engage Russia regarding the vaccine, which has also received criticism over its potentiality.
Compared to recent briefings, the Ministry of Heath yesterday announced a lower number of 245 people, who had tested positive for Covid-19 form a sample size of 3,150 over the last 24 hours.
This now brings to 30,365 the number of positive cases, pushing the cumulative tests to 394,566. However, 504 patients recovered from the disease while eight died bringing total fatalities to 482.
Health CAS Rashid Aman said though the numbers are coming down, they still need more time to study the trend.
“We need to see whether the trend is in decline or its determined by number of tests,” said Aman.
He announced that 504 patients had recovered from the disease. Eight patients succumbed, bringing total fatalities to 482.