(Yicai Global) Oct. 16 -- CanSino Biologics’ stock jumped 6.92 percent today on the news that the Chinese vaccine maker has penned an advanced purchase deal to sell 35 million doses of its recombinant novel coronavirus vaccine to the Mexican government, the firm said yesterday.

CanSino's Shanghai-listed shares [SHA:688185] closed at CNY395.62 (USD59). Its Hong Kong-listed stock [HKG:6185], however, fared less well, falling 1.72 percent to close at HKD177 (USD22.80).

Mexico will start Phase III clinical trials of the company’s recombinant adenovirus type-5 vector Ad5-nCoV vaccine within the next few days, it added. CanSino is already conducting Phase III trials in Russia and Pakistan.

The Mexican government has already ordered 39 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines from the UK’s AstraZeneca and 17 million doses from the US’ Pfizer. However, CanSino’s Ad5-nCoV vaccine is the only single-dose candidate among these, with the others requiring two jabs per patient.

The Tianjin-based firm’s vaccine, developed together with a team from the Academy of Military Science of the People’s Liberation Army, was the world’s first Covid-19 jab to enter clinical trials in March this year and was the first Covid-19 vaccine to be patented in China in August. There have been no serious adverse reactions among volunteers so far.

The CanSino and Pfizer vaccines are expected to hit the market in December, while AstraZeneca’s should follow in March.

Mexico, which has a population of 126 million people, has almost 830,000 confirmed cases of Covid-19 and 85,000 deaths so far.

Editor: Kim Taylor