The effectiveness of the Chinese vaccine Covid-19 “is not high”, admits the top health official

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“Protection rates for existing vaccines are not high,” Gao Fu, director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, told a conference in the southwestern city of Chengdu on Saturday.

He listed two options for solving the problem: one is to increase the number of doses or adjust the dose or interval between intakes; the other is to mix vaccines developed from different technologies.

Gao’s claims are a rare public admission by the country’s top health official that China’s vaccine against coronavirus vaccines is not ideal, and that protection needs to be improved.

China has positioned itself as a leader in the development and distribution of Covid-19 vaccines, promoting and supplying its vaccines to countries around the world, including Indonesia, Zimbabwe, Turkey and Brazil.

“More than 60 countries have approved the use of Chinese vaccine. The safety and efficacy of Chinese vaccine are being widely recognized by several countries,” Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said at a rally. press release in March.

However, the relatively low efficacy rate of Chinese vaccines could hamper credibility and damage Beijing’s so-called vaccine diplomacy.

The two pharmaceutical companies that supply most of the Chinese Covid-19 vaccines in the world have not published comprehensive data from clinical trials in medical journals on the effectiveness of their vaccines. But, based on the provisional results announced by the companies, their effectiveness lags far behind the new type of vaccines developed in the West that use mRNA to trigger an immune response.

The CoronaVac vaccine developed by Sinovac, a private company, was found to have an efficacy rate of only 50.4% in clinical trials in Brazil. Another trial in Turkey proved to be 83.5% effective. State-owned Sinopharm said its two vaccines have efficacy rates of 79.4% and 72.5%.

In comparison, Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines have efficacy rates of 97% and 94%, respectively.

In March, the UAE began offering a third dose of a Sinopharm vaccine to residents who did not generate enough antibodies after two shots.
China opens its borders to foreigners taking Chinese shots as geopolitical vaccine silos appear

In this regard, Gao’s comments on the relatively low efficacy of Chinese vaccines only affirmed a known fact, but it was the first time a high-level official in China publicly acknowledged it.

Statements by the Chinese head of the CDC also come as China aggressively increases its vaccination at home. As of Friday, the country has administered more than 160 million doses of Covid-19 vaccine. Its goal is to inoculate 40% of its 1.4 billion population by the end of June.

“What struck me most was that the suggestion of relatively low efficacy rates for Chinese vaccines seems to be a deviation from what the Chinese state and social media have said. The official narrative portrays vaccines. Chinese as safe and effective, ”said Yanzhong Huang, a senior member of the Foreign Relations Council, who posted Gao’s speech on Twitter over the weekend.

As Gao’s comments gained strength on social media and reached international headlines, Chinese censors quickly scrubbed online discussions and state media quickly posted an interview with Gao to back down his comments.

The Global Times, a state-run nationalist tabloid, quoted Gao as saying reports of his admission were “a complete misunderstanding.”

“The protection rates of all vaccines in the world are sometimes high and sometimes low. How to improve their effectiveness is a matter for scientists around the world to consider,” Gao said.

Huang, China’s public health expert, said the Global Times ’quick repudiation suggested that Chinese authorities would not tolerate any challenge to their official narrative.

“Gao’s statements were just an occasional aberration,” he said.

Additional Reuters reports.

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