What's holding coronavirus vaccine front-runner back: A China-Canada spat

Chinese customs hasn't approved shipments of CanSino's vaccine to Canada, the National Research Council of Canada said in an Aug. 26 email\

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 kick off 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