Medigen Vaccine Biologics Corp. (MVC), a Taiwanese company whose COVID-19 vaccine candidate has been approved for second-stage clinical trials, said Wednesday (Jan. 6) that it will recruit 3,700 volunteers to participate in the trials over the next three months.



The company is partnering with 11 hospitals in Taiwan to speed up the process, with the hope of applying for emergency use authorization (EUA) for the vaccine in the second quarter of the year, said Lin Tzou-yien (林奏延), chairman of the National Health Research Institutes and chief convener of the trials.



The vaccine, called MVC-COV1901, was jointly developed by the United States National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Medigen, said Hsieh Szu-min (謝思民), the principal investigator of the trials.



Hsieh said that he is confident about the outcome of phase 2 clinical trials, as the vaccine had good immunogenicity in the first phase.



Medigen, the only company in Taiwan to proceed to phase 2 clinical trials of a COVID-19 vaccine, will be given access to a government website that has successfully recruited more than 200,000 volunteers for domestic COVID-19 vaccine trials.