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Taiwan – Rich countries are monopolizing COVID-19 vaccine supplies and some regions of the world may have to rely on drugs developed in China to defeat the pandemic. The question is, will they work?
There’s no obvious reason to think not, but China has had vaccine scandals and its pharmacists have barely given information, either on its final human trials or on the more than one million injections they say they have already put into an emergency vaccination plan.
Rich countries have set aside some 9 billion of the 12 billion doses, mostly Western, expected to be produced next year, while COVAX, a global initiative to ensure equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines, has not reached its promised capacity of 2 billion doses.
For countries that have not yet secured a vaccine, China could be the only solution.
China has six candidates in the final phase of trials and is one of the few countries that can manufacture a vaccine on a large scale. Government members have announced a capacity of one billion doses next year, and President Xi Jinping promised that Chinese vaccines would be a blessing to the world.
The possibility of millions of people in other countries using their vaccines gives China the opportunity to repair the damage it did to its reputation that the outbreak escaped its borders, and to show it to the world. which can be an important scientific reference.
However, past scandals have reduced the confidence of its own citizens in its vaccines, and manufacturing and supply chain problems call into question whether it will really be able to act as a savior.
“There remains a question mark over how China can ensure the delivery of reliable vaccines,” said Joy Zhang, a professor of ethics and emerging science at the University of Kent in Britain, noting the “lack of transparency.” of China in scientific data and a bumpy history in vaccine distribution “.
Bahrain last week became the second country in the world to authorize a Chinese vaccine against COVID-19, after the United Arab Emirates. Morocco plans to use Chinese vaccines in a massive immunization campaign that should begin this month. Chinese authorities were also waiting to receive the green light in Turkey, Indonesia and Brazil, while trials continued in more than a dozen countries, including Russia, Egypt and Mexico.
In some countries, Chinese vaccines were received with suspicion. The President of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, Has repeatedly cast doubt on the effectiveness of Chinese vaccine candidate Sinovac, without mentioning any evidence, and said Brazilians would not act as “guinea pigs.”
Many experts praise China’s ability to produce vaccines.
“The studies appear to be well done,” said Jamie Triccas, head of immunology and infectious diseases at Sydney School of Medicine, in reference to clinical trials published in scientific journals. “I wouldn’t worry too much about that.”
China has been strengthening its immunization programs for more than a decade. It has produced successful large-scale vaccines for its population, such as measles and hepatitis, said Jin Dong-yan, a professor of medicine at Hong Kong University.
“There are no major outbreaks in China of any of these diseases,” he said. “That means vaccines are safe and effective.”
In the past decade, China has worked with the Gates Foundation and other agencies to improve the quality of its manufacturing. The World Health Organization has given preliminary certification to five Chinese vaccines for diseases other than VOCID-19, allowing United Nations agencies to purchase them for other countries.
Among the companies that obtained this prior certification are Sinovac and the state-owned Sinpharm, both leading developers of vaccines for COVID-19.
However, the Wuhan Institute of Organic Products, a subsidiary of Sinopharm that develops one of its vaccine candidates for COVID-19, was embroiled in a scandal in 2018.
Government inspectors found that the company, based in the city where the new coronavirus was first detected next year, had produced hundreds of thousands of ineffective doses of a combined diphtheria vaccine, the tetanus and whooping cough due to a computer failure.
That same year it was reported that Changsheng Biotechnology Co. had falsified data about a rabies vaccine.
In 2016, Chinese media revealed that two million doses of various childhood vaccines had been improperly stored and sold across the country for years.
Vaccination rates fell after these scandals.
“All my Chinese friends are skilled, affluent workers, and none of them will buy medicines made in China. That’s what it is,” said Ray Yip, former national director of the Gates Foundation in China. He said he was one of the few who didn’t mind buying pharmaceuticals made there.
China reformed its laws in 2017 and 2019 to tighten the vaccine storage protocol and increase inspections and fines for violations.
Leading developers in the country of COVID-19 vaccines have published some scientific findings in peer-reviewed scientific journals. But international experts have questioned how China recruited volunteers, the tracking system to identify possible side effects. Chinese companies and authorities have not released details.
Now, after the publication of data on the effectiveness of vaccines developed by Western Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, experts are waiting to see the Chinese results. The UAE regulatory agency, where Sinopharm trials were conducted, has said it appeared to have an 86% effectiveness, according to preliminary data from clinical trials. The Turkish government announced on Thursday that the Sinovac drug has an effectiveness of 91.25%, according to preliminary data.
Sinopharm did not respond to a request for comment on the effectiveness of the vaccine. Sinovac and Cansino, another Chinese vaccine company, did not respond to requests for interviews.
For some people in countries where the pandemic does not seem to subside, the country of origin of the vaccine does not matter.
“I plan to put it on, the first one to come, if it goes well,” said Daniel Alves Sants, a chef at a restaurant in Rio de Janeiro. “And I hope God helps.”