One of the world’s fastest-moving efforts to develop a COVID-19 vaccine is falling behind rivals, its advance appearing to be stymied by political tensions between China and Canada and concerns its shot may not work as well as others.
CanSino Biologics Inc., the Chinese company which in March started the world’s first human tests on an experimental coronavirus shot, has yet to start administering shots in critical final-stage trials on the vaccine it developed with the Chinese military. Meanwhile, rivals like U.S.-based Moderna Inc. and Britain’s AstraZeneca Plc as well as China’s Sinovac Biotech Inc. and Sinopharm are well into this last phase of testing, giving test inoculations to thousands of people to find out if they work.
With its progress toward Phase III trials trailing major competitors, CanSino hasn’t had the opportunity to assuage concerns from earlier-stage data, which showed the immune response generated by its shot varied greatly among participants. Its setbacks offer a look at both the scientific and political incertitudes companies are battling as they race to produce a vaccine against the virus that has already killed more than 850,000 people worldwide.
Just a few months ago, the Tianjin-based biotechnology firm was positioned at the vanguard of global vaccine trials thanks to a partnership with the Canadian government’s main research agency, which permitted the company to conduct tests in the North American country. CanSino was supposed to send its vaccine candidate — Ad5-nCoV, developed with Canadian technology — to Canada so that final-stage tests could begin there as early as in the fall. The vials never arrived.
Chinese customs hasn’t approved shipments of CanSino’s vaccine to Canada, the National Research Council of Canada said in an Aug. 26 email. The development appears to be part of a pattern of retribution against Canada since it arrested Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of Chinese telecom giant Huawei Technologies Co., on a U.S. handover request in December 2018. In recent months the relationship between the two countries has only worsened.
Guy Saint-Jacques, a former Canadian ambassador to China, said it’s clear the blocking of CanSino’s vaccine to Canada isn’t just a bureaucratic glitch because the company appears to have shipped to countries friendly to China.
“This is part of China’s COVID-19 diplomacy,” he said. “It’s unfortunately part of the overall difficulties we’re having with China.”
Global Ties
For CanSino, international collaboration is vital because late-stage trials require large-scale testing in place where there is an active outbreak, something no longer possible inside China, which has largely stamped out local transmission.
With Canada as a trial site now in question, the company has had to look elsewhere.
After telling the Hong Kong Stock Exchange that it hadn’t started enrolling participants for Phase III trials as of Aug. 18, CanSino said Wednesday it has entered into an agreement with NPO Petrovax Pharm LLC to to conduct a trial in Russia. CanSino declined to comment further when contacted earlier for this story.
Petrovax told Bloomberg at the end of August that it plans to recruit 625 volunteers in eight medical institutions in Russia, and that the selection and vaccination of volunteers will be carried out by the end of September. In the statement Wednesday, CanSino said it and Petrovax have received approval for Phase III clinical trials.
Since Meng’s arrest, China has jailed two Canadians on espionage charges, halted billions of dollars in Canadian imports, and put four other Canadians on death row. Further denting relations between Beijing and Ottawa, Canada also suspended its extradition treaty with Hong Kong in response to a new security law imposed there by China.
China’s General Administration of Customs didn’t respond to a request for comment. In its email, the National Research Council of Canada said that while the CanSino-Canada partnership had been reviewed earlier by the Chinese government, after it was signed Beijing introduced changes regarding the export of vaccines. Canada was ready to begin preliminary trials in June but, due to the delay, the research council is turning its focus to other partners, it said. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau described the developments on the CanSino vaccine as “unfortunate.”
After hitting an all time high of HK$271.4 on July 31, CanSino’s stock went on a steady decline in August, shedding nearly 40%, as news emerged that the vials it was supposed to ship to Canada for trial never left China. The stock fell as much as 11% on Wednesday before paring losses after CanSino’s statement on the Russia trial. It is still up more than 150% since the beginning of this year.
CanSino has had other struggles. With most of the vaccine frontrunners now having published their early human testing data, there have been some concerns that the antibodies triggered by CanSino’s shot as part of a vaccine-induced immune response could be lackluster compared to those stimulated by rivals, said Brad Loncar, chief executive officer of Loncar Investments in the U.S.
That could well be why the company has appeared slow in striking deals with countries to run phase III trials, said Loncar, who has holdings in the Chinese vaccine developer.
“Of all the data that I’ve seen of companies that have published human stage data, I would say CanSino was one that I would be most nervous about the Phase III,” Loncar said. “The antibody levels in general, when you compare them to what other companies have put out there, like Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech and even from the other Chinese vaccine makers like Sinovac and Sinopharm, I just think that the data hasn’t validated CanSino’s position as a frontrunner.”
While analysts have noted the varying standards used in measuring vaccine-induced immune response by different groups, CanSino suffers from one particular challenge: Its vaccine uses a genetically-engineered human adenovirus, which causes the common cold and to which a lot of people already have immunity. That preexisting immunity has shown to blunt the vaccine’s ability to generate the kind of antibodies that can bind to the spikes on the surface of the coronavirus to prevent it from entering human cells.
Rival Trials
Meanwhile, other Chinese vaccine makers are further ahead on Phase III trials. Beijing-based Sinovac has started vaccinating people in Brazil and Indonesia while more countries are signing up to be part of the company’s multi-center late-stage tests. State-owned China National Biotec Group is testing the two candidate vaccines it developed in the United Arab Emirates and has secured approval for further testing in Peru, Argentina and Morocco.
As for CanSino, in addition to the delayed Canada trial and its agreement with Russia, one of the company’s founders Qiu Dongxu said at a forum in July that the company is also talking to Brazil, Chile and Saudi Arabia on final-stage testing.
A large scale Phase III seeking to enroll 40,000 people is planned for Pakistan, according to an online clinical trials database. The trial has not yet started and will be headed by researchers from both China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention and the Canadian Center for Vaccinology.
CanSino’s vaccine still warrants further testing since it isn’t yet known how strong an immune response the vaccine can shore up if it’s administered twice, a strategy that has been tested by almost all frontrunners but CanSino. Trials in Canada could potentially find out the effect of a booster shot — if the vials ever make it to Canadian shores.
MONTREAL – Travel company Transat AT Inc. reported a loss in its latest quarter compared with a profit a year earlier as its revenue edged lower.
The parent company of Air Transat says it lost $39.9 million or $1.03 per diluted share in its quarter ended July 31.
The result compared with a profit of $57.3 million or $1.49 per diluted share a year earlier.
Revenue in what was the company’s third quarter totalled $736.2 million, down from $746.3 million in the same quarter last year.
On an adjusted basis, Transat says it lost $1.10 per share in its latest quarter compared with an adjusted profit of $1.10 per share a year earlier.
Transat chief executive Annick Guérard says demand for leisure travel remains healthy, as evidenced by higher traffic, but consumers are increasingly price conscious given the current economic uncertainty.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
Dollarama Inc.’s food aisles may have expanded far beyond sweet treats or piles of gum by the checkout counter in recent years, but its chief executive maintains his company is “not in the grocery business,” even if it’s keeping an eye on the sector.
“It’s just one small part of our store,” Neil Rossy told analysts on a Wednesday call, where he was questioned about the company’s food merchandise and rivals playing in the same space.
“We will keep an eye on all retailers — like all retailers keep an eye on us — to make sure that we’re competitive and we understand what’s out there.”
Over the last decade and as consumers have more recently sought deals, Dollarama’s food merchandise has expanded to include bread and pantry staples like cereal, rice and pasta sold at prices on par or below supermarkets.
However, the competition in the discount segment of the market Dollarama operates in intensified recently when the country’s biggest grocery chain began piloting a new ultra-discount store.
The No Name stores being tested by Loblaw Cos. Ltd. in Windsor, St. Catharines and Brockville, Ont., are billed as 20 per cent cheaper than discount retail competitors including No Frills. The grocery giant is able to offer such cost savings by relying on a smaller store footprint, fewer chilled products and a hearty range of No Name merchandise.
Though Rossy brushed off notions that his company is a supermarket challenger, grocers aren’t off his radar.
“All retailers in Canada are realistic about the fact that everyone is everyone’s competition on any given item or category,” he said.
Rossy declined to reveal how much of the chain’s sales would overlap with Loblaw or the food category, arguing the vast variety of items Dollarama sells is its strength rather than its grocery products alone.
“What makes Dollarama Dollarama is a very wide assortment of different departments that somewhat represent the old five-and-dime local convenience store,” he said.
The breadth of Dollarama’s offerings helped carry the company to a second-quarter profit of $285.9 million, up from $245.8 million in the same quarter last year as its sales rose 7.4 per cent.
The retailer said Wednesday the profit amounted to $1.02 per diluted share for the 13-week period ended July 28, up from 86 cents per diluted share a year earlier.
The period the quarter covers includes the start of summer, when Rossy said the weather was “terrible.”
“The weather got slightly better towards the end of the summer and our sales certainly increased, but not enough to make up for the season’s horrible start,” he said.
Sales totalled $1.56 billion for the quarter, up from $1.46 billion in the same quarter last year.
Comparable store sales, a key metric for retailers, increased 4.7 per cent, while the average transaction was down2.2 per cent and traffic was up seven per cent, RBC analyst Irene Nattel pointed out.
She told investors in a note that the numbers reflect “solid demand as cautious consumers focus on core consumables and everyday essentials.”
Analysts have attributed such behaviour to interest rates that have been slow to drop and high prices of key consumer goods, which are weighing on household budgets.
To cope, many Canadians have spent more time seeking deals, trading down to more affordable brands and forgoing small luxuries they would treat themselves to in better economic times.
“When people feel squeezed, they tend to shy away from discretionary, focus on the basics,” Rossy said. “When people are feeling good about their wallet, they tend to be more lax about the basics and more willing to spend on discretionary.”
The current economic situation has drawn in not just the average Canadian looking to save a buck or two, but also wealthier consumers.
“When the entire economy is feeling slightly squeezed, we get more consumers who might not have to or want to shop at a Dollarama generally or who enjoy shopping at a Dollarama but have the luxury of not having to worry about the price in some other store that they happen to be standing in that has those goods,” Rossy said.
“Well, when times are tougher, they’ll consider the extra five minutes to go to the store next door.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 11, 2024.
TORONTO – The U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has ordered TD Bank Group to pay US$28 million for repeatedly sharing inaccurate, negative information about its customers to consumer reporting companies.
The agency says TD has to pay US$7.76 million in total to tens of thousands of victims of its illegal actions, along with a US$20 million civil penalty.
It says TD shared information that contained systemic errors about credit card and bank deposit accounts to consumer reporting companies, which can include credit reports as well as screening reports for tenants and employees and other background checks.
CFPB director Rohit Chopra says in a statement that TD threatened the consumer reports of customers with fraudulent information then “barely lifted a finger to fix it,” and that regulators will need to “focus major attention” on TD Bank to change its course.
TD says in a statement it self-identified these issues and proactively worked to improve its practices, and that it is committed to delivering on its responsibilities to its customers.
The bank also faces scrutiny in the U.S. over its anti-money laundering program where it expects to pay more than US$3 billion in monetary penalties to resolve.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 11, 2024.
