Top management of the Chinese drugmaker Sinopharm received COVID-19 vaccines last March, about three months after Wuhan city saw its first patient and before approval was granted for clinical trials.

The revelation, coming from Sinopharm chair Yu Qingming, ironically raises suspicions of the timeline about knowledge of the initial outbreak in Wuhan and the coronavirus’ transmissibility.

Yu, also a member of the state legislature National People’s Congress, told People’s Daily that four levels of top executives were vaccinated in March last year. Antibody concentrations remained high after a year of observation, he said.

The news showed that Sinopharm knew about the infection capability of the virus much earlier than others, Wuhan resident Xu Yang told Radio Free Asia. Wuhan recorded its first official case on Dec. 8, 2019, and entered a lockdown on Jan. 23, 2020, to control the spread of COVID-19.

Internet users expressed shock that Sinopharm executives could receive vaccines as early as March 2020.

People’s Daily also reported that Sinopharm formed a leadership group on Jan. 19 last year and arranged one billion yuan for three laboratories to research vaccines. The Ministry of Science and Technology gave emergency approval for the pharmaceutical firm to start a project to develop an inactivated vaccine on Feb. 1, so according to the official timeline, the firm was able to come up with a vaccine in a month or so.

Sinopharm received approval from the National Medical Products Administration to start clinical trials on April 12, Xinhua reported. It meant that the executives were inoculated before getting approval for the clinical trials.

Hong Kong respiratory specialist Lam Bing told Apple Daily that it would take only a few months to develop a vaccine, with inactivated vaccines being easier to make. However, clinical trials would take a much longer time, to confirm the effectiveness and safety of the new drug.

It was difficult to judge whether a company could develop a vaccine within a month or two without knowing how much effort it had put into the research, Lam said. It would not be a violation of medical ethics if volunteers agreed to take the vaccines and bear the responsibilities, he added.

Hong Kong infectious disease doctor Wilson Lam said vaccine development would normally take 10 years, but theoretically it could be done within a month if the virus genome was already known. Serious side effects might appear in early trials, he said.

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