BEIJING (AP) – In a rare admission of the weakness of Chinese coronavirus vaccines, the country’s top disease control chief says their effectiveness is low and the government is considering mixing them to give them a boost .
Chinese vaccines “do not have very high protection rates,” the director of China’s Disease Control Centers, Gao Fu, said at a conference Saturday in the southwestern city of Chengdu.
Beijing has distributed hundreds of millions of doses in other countries, while trying to dispel doubts about the effectiveness of Western vaccines.
“It is now being formally considered whether we should use different vaccines of different technical lines for the immunization process,” Gao said.
Researchers in Brazil have found that the effectiveness rate of a vaccine against Sinovac coronavirus, a Chinese developer, to prevent symptomatic infections, is 50.4%. In comparison, it has been found that the vaccine made by Pfizer is 97% effective.
Beijing has not yet approved any foreign vaccine for use in China, where the coronavirus emerged in late 2019.
Gao did not give details about possible changes in strategy, but mentioned mRNA, an experimental technique previously used by Western vaccine developers, while Chinese drug manufacturers used traditional technology.
“Everyone should consider the benefits that mRNA vaccines can bring to humanity,” Gao said. “We have to follow it closely and not ignore it just because we already have several types of vaccines.”
Gao previously raised questions about the safety of mRNA vaccines. The official Xinhua news agency quoted it as saying in December that it could not rule out negative side effects because they were first used in healthy people.
Chinese state media and popular science and health blogs have also questioned the safety and efficacy of the Pfizer vaccine, which uses mRNA.
As of April 2, about 34 million people have received the two doses required by Chinese vaccines and about 65 million have received one, according to Gao.
Experts say vaccine mixing or sequential vaccination can increase effectiveness rates. Trials around the world are studying the vaccine mix or the possibility of doing a booster test after a longer period of time. Researchers in Britain are studying a possible combination of Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines.