China has drafted a policy on the emergency use of diagnostic products for the Ebola virus disease and clinical trials, the country’s drug regulator said on Friday, as the number of people affected globally by the epidemic nears 16,000.
In a brief statement, the China Food and Drug Administration (CFDA) said it had also approved three companies to produce Ebola diagnosis products for emergency reserve use.
“These (products) provide key technological safeguards for China to diagnose the Ebola virus and defend against any epidemic situation,” it said.
It did not add any further detail about the draft policy or say what the clinical trials relating to Ebola would involve.
No cases of Ebola have been reported in China, but there are millions of Chinese nationals living in Africa, with around 10,000 in the worst affected countries – Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia.
This has prompted concerns that Ebola could spread to China, which has previously faced severe outbreaks of infectious diseases such as SARS and bird flu.
The three companies named in the statement regarding diagnosis products are Da An Gene Co Ltd, Shenzhen Pu Rui Kang and Shanghai ZJ Bio-Tech Co Ltd.
Chinese drugmaker Sihuan Pharmaceutical Holdings Group Ltd is separately developing a treatment for Ebola with the country’s military, and hopes to get fast-track approval for the drug.
(Reporting by Adam Jourdan; Editing by Clarence Fernandez and Pravin Char)