China's National Health and Family Planning Commission has issued new regulations ordering transparency in the handling of vaccines and vaccination equipment to ensure their safety.
Under the new guidelines distributed in a circular, the agency now requires detailed records on the supply and storage of vaccines, including the temperatures during their distribution and storage.
The data is to be retained for at least two years after the vaccine's expiration date.
Information supplied with a vaccine would have to be objective, to the point that it cannot indicate "the manufacturer and distributors of the vaccines."
Similarly, the information cannot compare the safety of one vaccine with another.
Apparently, China has had a problem with companies promoting therapeutic biological products as vaccines, for it took the effort to ban that practice and any comparison with vaccines.
- here is the State Council release