The head of a major state-owned Chinese pharmaceutical company explained its coronavirus vaccine will be commercially available at the end of the year. Liu Jingzhen, '' the chairman of SinoPharm, advised that a Chinese Communist Party newspaper that the vaccine would cost less than 1,000 yuan ($140) and be awarded in two shots, 28 weeks apart.

He said students and employees in major cities would must find the vaccine, but not those living in densely populated rural areas.

"Not all of the 1.4 billion people in our country have to carry action," he said in an interview published in Tuesday in the Guangming Daily.

<span style="color: #ff6600;"><a style="color: #ff6600;" href="https://www.trtworld.com/life/china-s-sinopharm-covid-19-vaccine-to-be-available-at-end-of-2020-38989">SinoPharm, that has two vaccines in trial, has an annual manufacturing capacity of 220 million doses,'' Liu said.</a></span>

Liu, who is also the corporation's Communist Party secretary, told the newspaper that he had been injected with the vaccine.

Reports that Chinese researchers and executives have received shots of their vaccines have raised ethical questions in some scientific circles.