BEIJING (AP) – In a rare acknowledgment of the weakness of Chinese coronavirus vaccines, the country’s leading disease control officer says its effectiveness is low and that the government is considering mixing it to give them a boost.
Chinese vaccines “do not have very high protection rates,” China Centers for Disease Control director Gao Fu said at a conference in the southwestern city of Chengdu on Saturday.
Beijing has distributed hundreds of millions of doses in other countries while also trying to question the effectiveness of Western vaccines.
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“It is now formally being considered whether we should use different vaccinations from different technical lines for the vaccination process,” Gao said.
The researchers in Brazil found that the effectiveness rate of a coronavirus vaccine from Sinovac, a Chinese developer, for the prevention of symptomatic infections is up to 50.4%. For comparison, the vaccine made by Pfizer was found to be 97% effective.
Beijing has yet to approve foreign vaccines for use in China, where the coronavirus originated in late 2019.
Illustrative: A worker inspects bottles of SARS CoV-2 vaccine for COVID-19 manufactured by SinoVac at its Beijing factory on Thursday, September 24, 2020 (AP Photo / Ng Han Guan)
Gao gives no details on possible changes in strategy, but mentions mRNA, a previously experimental technique used by Western vaccine developers, while China’s drug manufacturers use 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, because we already have different types of vaccines.”
Gao had earlier raised questions about the safety of mRNA vaccines. He told the official Xinhua News Agency in December that he could not rule out negative side effects as they were being used on healthy people for the first time.
Chinese state media and popular health and science blogs also question the safety and efficacy of the Pfizer vaccine, which uses mRNA.
As of April 2, about 34 million people had both received the two doses needed by Chinese vaccines, and about 65 million, according to Gao, said.
Experts believe that the mixing of vaccines, or sequential vaccination, can increase the effectiveness rates. Trials around the world are looking at mixing vaccines or increasing the shot after a longer period of time. Researchers in Britain are studying a possible combination of Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines.
