Thanks to researchers, both Chinese and overseas, who stepped up their efforts in vaccine trials, Chinese company CanSino Biologics (CanSinoBIO) has applied for commercial use of its single-shot COVID-19 vaccine on Wednesday. 

The interim analysis of data from its multi-country trials showed the vaccine, known as Ad5-nCoV, has a success rate of 68.83 percent at preventing all symptomatic disease and 95.47 percent at preventing severe disease 14 days after the vaccination. 

CanSino conducted the largest clinical trial it ever had on its COVID-19 vaccine in Pakistan last year, reported the Global Times. It is also the largest one in Pakistan, which was one of the earliest to join in CanSino phase-3 clinical trials around the globe. 

Gou Jinbo, who was spearheading the Chinese scientific team in Pakistan, said "No phase 3 clinical trial of this large scale has ever been conducted in Pakistan. This collaboration is a breakthrough for Pakistan, as they never expected to efficiently handle a large-scale, high-standard, fast-paced clinical trial likes this." 

The company has sent two groups of Chinese experts to Pakistan to oversee the clinical trial since last September.  

Gou said compared to a regular trial, the team worked 10 times harder for this, according to Global Times. "We never skip the core steps, strictly following Good Clinical Practice and our own Standard Operating Procedure (SOP), but we compressed a lot of work in a much tighter timeframe to race against the virus." 

Gou said the Chinese team took responsibility of designing the trial and guiding it with protocols step by step as the Pakistani partners worked on recruiting volunteers and executing the trials. The team didn't interfere with the data produced, according to Gou. 

The Chinese experts also provided online and offline training sessions to help the local Pakistani clinical trial team who were not experienced in large-scale clinical drug studies to build a complete quality management system. 

Lack of enough volunteers is one of the obstacles the team was facing when they operated the trials. To push the recruiting process faster, the team has launched video campaigns and psychological counseling targeted the concerns and doubts collected from the locals. 

The local research team also persuaded their friends and families to be the first volunteers to take the shots. The efforts witnessed its payback as over 17,000 participants joined in, exceeding the expectations. 

Both Pakistani and Chinese researchers are also experiencing language difficulties as one spoke Chinese and the other spoke Urdu while they communicated through English over technical terms. Many Chinese researchers voluntarily studied English at night after a day of work during the trial, Global Times reports. 

For about two months, both Pakistani and Chinese researchers have exhausted endeavor to build up the database which proved the vaccine is effective for use.

Earlier this month, the vaccine has already been approved for emergency use both in Pakistan and Mexico.