In a Shenzhen hospital, 21-year-old airport worker Wang Shuyue is queuing up to receive her second shot.
“I feel it’s safe because so many people in the country have taken the vaccine so there should be no major problems,” she told the Guardian. “I think it has to be effective, otherwise not so many people will take it.”
Wang is one of the 50 million people that China aims to vaccinate against Covid-19 within a few weeks in one of the most ambitious vaccinations on earth.
The country is battling its worst outbreak in ten months, aiming to vaccinate about 3.5% of the population before the start of the lunar New Year holiday on February 11, when hundreds of millions of people across the country cross to family and relatives to visit. four.
China has pledged to use its own vaccines to vaccinate its people and share them with the rest of the world, especially developing countries. The fight seeks to strengthen – or restore – China’s reputation on the world stage after allegations of cover-ups and early missteps in the provision of protective equipment. There are logistical advantages to China’s supply, but with great transparency about late-stage clinical data and some conflicting reports, health experts have pointed out that they need to be careful.
The vaccine, first announced in December, covers more than 25,300 sites in 75 cities and rural towns reported, delivering vaccines in two doses about 21 days apart, free of charge. Local Chinese media reports indicate that clinics have received the emergency-approved Sinovac vaccine (for key workers) or the conditionally approved Sinopharm vaccine (for the wider population). The reported scope and speed of the program surpassed others, including the US operation Warp Speed and its launch in Britain.
According to one clinic that visited the Guardian, a record of vaccination will be integrated with local health code programs, enabling recipients to bypass quarantine when traveling between cities and regions.
The rollout began with 18- to 59-year-olds in key worker groups under emergency approval, and then targeted at vulnerable people before being extended to all people over 60. Authorities aim to release all first doses by the end of this week late administration, and second doses before the start of festivities. A health commission official, Wang Bin, said so far on Wednesday that 10 million doses had been administered so far, including about 1.6 million people under an emergency regime before full approvals were issued. Health experts told state media last week that the current rate is likely to reach only 20 million people by the deadline, but producers are accelerating production.
The push comes as China reports more than 100 new cases in consecutive days, the highest daily total since March. Most cases were reported among the rural population of Hebei, the province around Beijing. On Thursday, it was reported that the first person had died at Covid in China in eight months. Three cities near Beijing have been closed.
Logistics benefits – and setbacks
Calvin Ho, an associate professor of law at Hong Kong University focusing on bioethics, said the strike was not expected to yield 3.5% herd immunity – health officials said their ultimate goal was to cover about 60-70% vaccination – but it will give some protection as people gather for the new year.
There were logistical advantages to the implementation of China compared to that of other countries, Ho said. The locally produced vaccines do not need to be frozen, which makes transport and storage much simpler than the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines used in countries such as the USA and the United Kingdom. China also has the ability to notify production at a glance.
The vaccination system started long before the current Hebei outbreak. Some experts doubt the need to accelerate vaccinations, as there is great concern about the transparency and efficacy of the vaccine.
The two main Chinese vaccines were manufactured using a historically successful and less risky method of using an inactive virus to elicit an immune response, but the manufacturers and authorities are accused of lacking transparency and having no phase 3 trial data from the international clinical trials not disclosed.
On Tuesday, Brazilian researchers revealed that the Sinovac vaccine is much less effective than previously said. The overall efficacy of 50.38% pushes the vaccine just above the World Health Organization’s 50% standard for approval, but falls below the 78% announced last week, and far below the efficacy rates of the Modern and Pfizer vaccinations. . The findings are likely to be of concern in the ten or so countries that have already ordered or received hundreds of millions of doses.
Associate Professor James Trauer, head of epidemiological modeling at Monash University’s School of Public Health, said in countries like China that have had a relatively small epidemic (since the Wuhan birth), herd immunity is being achieved through vaccination ‘critical’. However, these situational factors also meant that it was not urgent.
‘If you have a large vaccination program, there are concerns from a safety perspective that reactions may be missed. ” It’s going to be really difficult to judge from an efficiency perspective, because there is currently so little coronavirus transmitted in China, ” Trauer said.
‘They do have the opportunity to search for high quality data [first], and they chose not to do so. This is a little worrying. ‘
HKU’s Ho said the risk of early implementation seems low. “Since we do not know for sure what the real epidemiological situation is in China … it makes sense to have the precautions in place if the means allow it,” he said.
On Tuesday, about a dozen people lined up for a vaccination at the Shenzhen Bao’an Group Center for Traditional Chinese Medicine, one of five official vaccination sites in the southern Chinese megacity.
Ms Sun, who teaches Chinese to foreigners, is one of the authorities hoping they have been vaccinated before the lunar New Year holiday.
She said she was a little worried about safety when she had the first shot, but had no adverse reaction, and was now back for the second time. “I decided to take the vaccine myself, it’s completely free,” she said.
According to Sun, a man who did not want to be named regularly traveled to China for work, so he took it as a precautionary measure.
‘I want to encourage people who travel a lot, whether inside or outside the country, to take the vaccine. But if you are someone who is in the office every day, you can decide if it is necessary. ‘