China admits its vaccines have low effectiveness

In a rare admission of the weakness of chinese vaccines against him coronavirus, the country’s top disease control official has ensured that his effectiveness it is baja and that the government is considering mixing them with others to give it a boost.

Chinese vaccines “do not have very high protection rates,” said Gao Fu, director of the China Centers for Disease Control, at a conference in the southwestern city of Chengdu on Saturday.

They don’t have very high protection rates “

Gao FuDirector of the Chinese Centers for Disease Control

Beijing has distributed hundreds of millions of doses in other countries and has also tried to raise doubts about the effectiveness of Western vaccines. “It is now being formally considered whether we should use different vaccines from different technical lines for the immunization process,” Gao said.

According to Brazilian researchers, the effectiveness rate of a coronavirus vaccine from Sinovac, a Chinese developer, is 50.4%. By comparison, the vaccine made by Pfizer has been found to be 97% effective.

Beijing has yet to approve any foreign vaccines for use in China, where the coronavirus emerged in late 2019. Gao did not elaborate on possible changes to the strategy, but did mention mRNA, a previously experimental technique used by Western vaccine developers. while China’s drug makers used traditional technology.

“Everyone should consider the benefits that mRNA vaccines can bring to humanity,” he said. “We must follow it carefully and not ignore it just because we already have several types of vaccines.” Gao had previously raised doubts about the safety of mRNA vaccines. In December, he was quoted by the official Xinhua news agency as saying that he could not rule out negative side effects because they were being used for the first time in healthy people.

Read also

Ferran Planas Padrós

Chinese state media and popular health and science blogs have also questioned the safety and efficacy of Pfizer’s vaccine, which uses mRNA.

As of April 2, some 34 million people had received the two doses required by Chinese vaccines and about 65 million had received one, according to Gao.

Experts say that mixing vaccines, or sequential immunization, could increase the effectiveness rate. Trials around the world seek to mix vaccines or give a booster injection after a longer period of time. Researchers in Britain are studying a possible combination of Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines.

–