Just how close is a vaccine for COVID-19? 

As rival firms around the world race to get their potential coronavirus inoculations ready for mass consumption, China's Sinovac Biotech expects data showing the effectiveness of its CoronaVac product to be ready before the end of this year.

The vaccine developer's senior director of global strategy, Guang Yang, told The Agenda with Stephen Cole trials are going well, adding that thousands of volunteers in Brazil had already been inoculated without showing any severe adverse effects. 

As China discusses the potential use of its vaccines around the world with the World Health Organization and nations such as the Philippines eyeing late-stage trials of CoronaVac as early as November, the pressure is on to harvest the data to see how effective it is – and then roll out the vaccine as safely and quickly as possible.

Click here for more from The Agenda with Stephen Cole