The Chinese government is slowly approving its first foreign vaccine against Covid-19 out of concern that it could undermine confidence in Chinese vaccines, providing further evidence of the tenacity of vaccine nationalism in the face of a resurgent pandemic.
Chinese health authorities are concerned that public doubts about Chinese vaccines arising from the approval of the German BioNTech SE vaccine could alter the country’s plans to use its own production traits to achieve an ambitious vaccination target before end the year, according to people familiar with the deliberations.
China was expected to approve the BioNTech vaccine, which is based on state-of-the-art mRNA technology, in July. Although Chinese vaccines, developed with traditional methods, have been shown to be effective in preventing hospitalizations, Chinese public health experts had pushed for the introduction of Western vaccines that have proven to be more effective in clinical trials.
Uncertainty about the protection offered by the BioNTech vaccine against new variants is also causing hesitation, according to people.
Clinical trials conducted prior to the pandemic show that the BioNTech vaccine is about 95% effective against symptomatic diseases, compared to 51% of Sinovac BioTech Ltd. and 79% of Sinopharm. The Delta variant reduces BioNTech’s effectiveness by up to 64%, according to data from Israel, while there is little data on the degree of protection of Chinese vaccines against the new variant.