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Taiwan – Rich countries are accumulating supplies of COVID-19 vaccines, and some regions of the world may have to rely on drugs developed in China to defeat the pandemic. The question is, will they work?
There is no obvious reason to believe so, but China has had vaccine scandals and its pharmaceutical companies have provided little information, either about their final human studies or about the more than a million injections they say they have already given. of an emergency vaccination plan.
Rich countries have set aside about 9 billion of the 12 billion doses, most of them Western, which are expected to be produced next year, while COVAX, a global initiative to ensure equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines, has failed. the promised capacity of 2 billion doses.
For countries that have not yet provided a vaccine, China may be the only solution.
China has six candidates in the final phase of its studies and is one of the few countries that can manufacture a vaccine on a large scale. Government members have announced a capacity of billions of doses next year, and President Xi Jinping has promised that Chinese vaccines will benefit the world.
The possibility of millions of people in other countries using their vaccines gives China the opportunity to repair the damage the outbreak has done to its reputation for escaping its borders and to show the world that it can be an important scientific landmark.
However, past scandals have reduced the confidence of its own citizens in its vaccines, and problems with production and the supply chain call into question whether it can really be a savior.
“There remains a question mark over how China can ensure the provision of reliable vaccines,” said Joy Zhang, a professor of ethics and emerging science at Kent University in the United Kingdom, noting China’s lack of transparency. scientific data. and a checkered record in the distribution of vaccines. “
Bahrain last week became the second country in the world to authorize a Chinese vaccine against COVID-19 after the United Arab Emirates. Morocco plans to use Chinese vaccines in a massive immunization campaign that is set to begin this month. Chinese authorities also expected to receive the green light in Turkey, Indonesia and Brazil, while trials continued in more than a dozen countries, including Russia, Egypt and Mexico.
In some countries, Chinese vaccines have been received with suspicion. The President of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, has repeatedly questioned the effectiveness of the vaccine candidate of the Chinese company Sinovac, without citing any evidence and said that Brazilians will not act as “guinea pigs”.
Many experts praise China’s ability to produce vaccines.
“The studies appear to be well done,” said Jamie Triccas, head of immunology and infectious diseases at Sydney Medical School, referring to clinical trials published in scientific journals. “I wouldn’t worry too much about that.”
China has been strengthening its immunization programs for more than a decade. It has produced successful vaccines on a large scale for its population, such as those for measles and hepatitis, said Jin Dong-yan, a professor of medicine at the University of Hong Kong.
“There are no major outbreaks in China of any of these diseases,” he said. “That means vaccines are safe and effective.”
Over the past decade, China has worked with the Gates Foundation and other agencies to improve the quality of its manufacturing. The World Health Organization has pre-certified five Chinese vaccines for diseases other than COVID-19, allowing United Nations agencies to purchase them for other countries.
Among the companies that have obtained this pre-certification are Sinovac and Sinpharm, state, both top developers of COVID-19 vaccines.
However, the Wuhan Institute of Organic Products, a Sinopharm affiliate that develops one of its vaccine candidates for COVID-19, was involved in a scandal in 2018.
Government inspectors found that the company, based in the city where the new coronavirus was first detected next year, produced hundreds of thousands of ineffective doses of a combined diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis vaccine for equipment failure.
In the same year, Changsheng Biotechnology Co. was reported to have falsified data about a rabies vaccine.
In 2016, Chinese media revealed that two million doses of various childhood vaccines had been improperly stored and sold across the country for years.
Vaccination rates have fallen after these scandals.
“All my Chinese friends are skilled, skilled workers and none of them will buy medicine from China. That’s what it is, “said Ray Yip, former national director of the Gates Foundation in China. He said he is one of the few who does not bother to buy pharmaceuticals made there.
China reformed its laws in 2017 and 2019 to tighten the vaccine storage protocol and increase inspections and fines for violations.
The top developers of COVID-19 vaccines in the country have published several scientific findings in peer-reviewed scientific journals. But international experts have questioned how China recruited volunteers, the tracking system for identifying potential side effects. Chinese companies and authorities did not disclose details.
Now, after publishing data on the effectiveness of vaccines developed by Western Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, experts are waiting to see the Chinese results. The regulatory agency in the United Arab Emirates, where Sinopharm was tested, said it appears to be 86% effective, according to preliminary data from clinical trials. The Turkish government announced on Thursday that Sinovac is 91.25% effective, according to preliminary data.
Sinopharm did not respond to a request for comment on the vaccine’s effectiveness. Sinovac and CanSino, another Chinese vaccine company, did not respond to requests for interviews.
For some people in countries where the pandemic does not seem to be disappearing, the country of origin of the vaccine does not matter.
“I’m going to put it, the first one that comes, if it goes well,” said Daniel Alves Santos, a chef at a restaurant in Rio de Janeiro. “And I hope God helps.”