According to The Paper newspaper, scientists from an institute in Wuhan, under the China National Biotec Group (CNBG), a subsidiary of Sinopharm, has isolated the Delta variant of the novel coronavirus and is accelerating development on Delta-specific vaccines, its Director Duan Kai told the media.

‘We are accelerating research on the variant. We are making efforts to finish pre-clinical trial research and apply for emergency use approval as soon as possible,’ Duan said.

Duan stated that according to data from Phase-III clinical trials on a Covid-19 vaccine developed by the institute, the vaccine showed an overall protection effectiveness of 72.51% for all recipients and 100% efficacy against medium and critical diseases for all confirmed patients.

¨All recipients can produce high antibodies,¨ the director said.

China is recovering from a strong Covid-19 outbreak, precisely produced by Delta variant and spread to nearly twenty provinces in less than a month.

Scientists assured that all national vaccines are still effective in preventing critical disease and deaths caused by virus mutation, including Delta, although they noted that the high virus load of Delta also requires booster shots to increase the antibody level in recipients to neutralize the virus.

The most effective methods to protect people from Delta is still vaccination and non-pharmaceutical interventions, like wearing masks and keeping social distance.

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