How a Chinese Covid-19 drug was created in an instant – after years in the making

Chinese viral immunologist Zhang Linqi considers himself lucky that he and his team developed a Covid-19 treatment and vaccine so swiftly and so effectively.

Zhang, based at Tsinghua University in Beijing, is the driving force behind an antibody treatment that cut hospitalisation and deaths by 78 per cent in multicentre clinical trials and is expected to be approved in China within weeks. The vaccine has just completed early-stage trials and is expected to proceed soon to late-stage human trials.