A joint venture between a Chinese company and a Halifax research team hoping to execute Canada's first clinical trials of a possible COVID-19 vaccine has been squashed amid conflict between the two nations.
The National Research Council of Canada and CanSino Biologics partnership was declared in May by the federal government.
A team at the Canadian Centre for Vaccinology at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia was supposed to work with CanSino to run the first Canadian clinical trials for a possible COVID-19 vaccine.
A vaccine by the name of Ad5-nCoV made by CanSino was already being run through human trials in China and results have shown positive. However in July, there was friction between the Canada China partnership and as a result shipments got put on hold and that were supposed to be delivered in May.
The National Research Council (NRC) via email verified the vaccine candidate had not gotten the go ahead by Chinese customs to ship to Canada.
The statement said CanSino's collaborators in the Chinese government — the Beijing Institute of Technology and the Ministry of Science and Technology, which had provided funding to CanSino — reviewed the agreement between the NRC and CanSino before it was signed.
The NRC said in its statement. "Subsequent to signing, the government of China introduced process changes regarding shipping vaccines to other countries, the process is not clear to the NRC, but CanSino does not have the authority to ship the vaccine at this time."NRC didn't make it clear if what or any role the between Canada and China played in this development.