<p>The head of a major state-owned Chinese pharmaceutical company said its coronavirus vaccine will be commercially available by the end of the year.</p>.<p>Liu Jingzhen, the chairman of SinoPharm, told a Chinese Communist Party newspaper that the vaccine would cost less than 1,000 yuan ($140) and be given in two shots, 28 days apart.</p>.<p>He said students and workers in major cities would need to get the vaccine, but not those living in sparsely populated rural areas.</p>.<p>“Not all of the 1.4 billion people in our country have to take it,” he said in an interview published on Tuesday in the Guangming Daily.</p>.<p>SinoPharm, which has two vaccines in the trial, has an annual manufacturing capacity of 220 million doses, Liu said.</p>.<p>Liu, who is also the company's Communist Party secretary, told the paper that he had been injected with the vaccine.</p>.<p>Reports that Chinese researchers and executives have received shots of their vaccines have raised ethical questions in some scientific circles.</p>
<p>The head of a major state-owned Chinese pharmaceutical company said its coronavirus vaccine will be commercially available by the end of the year.</p>.<p>Liu Jingzhen, the chairman of SinoPharm, told a Chinese Communist Party newspaper that the vaccine would cost less than 1,000 yuan ($140) and be given in two shots, 28 days apart.</p>.<p>He said students and workers in major cities would need to get the vaccine, but not those living in sparsely populated rural areas.</p>.<p>“Not all of the 1.4 billion people in our country have to take it,” he said in an interview published on Tuesday in the Guangming Daily.</p>.<p>SinoPharm, which has two vaccines in the trial, has an annual manufacturing capacity of 220 million doses, Liu said.</p>.<p>Liu, who is also the company's Communist Party secretary, told the paper that he had been injected with the vaccine.</p>.<p>Reports that Chinese researchers and executives have received shots of their vaccines have raised ethical questions in some scientific circles.</p>