Hong Kong executives, including expats, prefer to take China’s Sinovac vaccine over the more effective BioNTech / Pfizer shot in hopes it will speed up China’s mainland visa and re-entry procedures, according to local health officials.
The move follows an extraordinary offer from Beijing to provide ‘visa facilitation’ for overseas visitors who choose to be vaccinated with a jab made in China, rather than a foreign one. The proposal highlighted fears of vaccine nationalism during the pandemic.
The Hong Kong government offered residents a choice between the BioNTech sample, which has a 95 percent efficiency rate, and the CoronaVac shot manufactured by Sinovac, whose efficiency rate is only 50 percent.
One CEO of a US company in Hong Kong said he had chosen Sinovac’s sting “pure” for business reasons. “I believe it will get better treatment for my visa,” he said.
‘[My expat friends] “Everyone thinks it makes no sense to get the Sinovac if the BioNTech has a much higher efficiency rate,” he added. “But I have to start traveling.”
Although Hong Kong is part of China, a border with passport controls between them is maintained as part of the autonomy granted to the area during its handover of the United Kingdom in 1997.
Hong Kong’s wider community has shown a reluctant attitude towards the government’s vaccination program, in part because of the underlying distrust of the government among many people as well as concerns about the safety of the jabs.
But some executives of the company were more willing to consider the Sinovac vaccine if it would speed up access to the mainland. During the pandemic, China imposed strict travel restrictions on those wishing to enter Hong Kong, with some exemptions.
“Visa facilitation only applies to applicants vaccinated with Covid-19 vaccines produced in China,” the Chinese government said last month without giving further details about the vaccines.
However, some were concerned that European and other Western governments would not accept China-made vaccinations for quarantine-free travel.
Iceland, one of the first countries to offer quarantine-free visits to vaccinated visitors, will only recognize vaccines approved by the European Medicines Agency or the World Health Organization. No surveys made by China are on either list.
Yeung Chiu-fat, a general practitioner and former president of the Hong Kong Medical Union, said he had vaccinated more than 200 people with the Sinovac jab since the program began in late February.
About 30 percent took the vaccine to help them return to mainland China. “They were pretty excited,” he said.
Another Hong Kong executive said he had a need for his job to return to China, so he had to choose the Sinovac jab.
William Chui, president of The Society of Hospital Pharmacists, said some patients joked about a “mix-and-match” approach so they could travel to China and elsewhere through their first sting as Sinovac and their second as BioNTech. “But as a pharmacist, I do not recommend it,” he said.
Many international executives are based in Hong Kong, but most of their business is on the mainland.
Business chambers in Hong Kong have warned that travel restrictions on the mainland are hurting the city’s attractiveness as a base for operations in China, and some are considering moving some features to Shanghai or elsewhere.
Apart from the lower efficiency rate, Sinovac also has accusations of not being sufficiently transparent in disclosing data on phase 3 trials. Hong Kong’s government panel of experts said the shot’s effectiveness rate had risen to 62.3 per cent if the second dose of vaccine came after a 28-day hiatus.
The health authorities in Singapore said that Sinovac could not provide sufficient information to evaluate the sting, and that they asked for more information.
Sinovac did not immediately respond to a request for comment.