The director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention said authorities on Saturday are considering mixing COVID-19 vaccines because the doses made in the domestic market “do not have very high protection rates” on the PA.
Why does it matter: Gao Fu’s remarks at a press conference in the southwestern city of Chengdumark mark the first time a Chinese health official has spoken publicly about the low effectiveness of vaccines produced in China.
News management: Gao said officials were looking at two options designed “to solve the problem that the effectiveness of … existing vaccines is not high,” according to the South China Morning Post.
- One is the mixing of vaccines, known as “sequential immunization”, and the other is “dose adjustment, dose interval or increasing the number of doses”, reports SCMP.
Intrigue: Experts say mixing vaccines can “increase efficacy rates,” the AP notes.
- Scientists in the UK are conducting clinical trials of Oxford University-AstraZeneca and Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines.
The whole picture: The Chinese government has only approved locally made vaccines for use against the virus.
- Sinopharm announced just before the coronavirus vaccine was approved for use late last year that its vaccine was 79.3% effective, although experts said important data were missing.
- China’s health regulator approved the Sinovac vaccine in February last year. Several phase 3 studies in Brazil, Turkey and Indonesia have shown efficacy rates of 50.38% to 91.25%, notes Shawna Chen, from Axios.
Note: Gao said “everyone should consider the benefits” of mRNA vaccines, used by Western drug manufacturers as a tool against the pandemic, but not by their Chinese counterparts, the AP said.
What are they saying: Tao Lina, a Shanghai vaccine expert who attended Gao’s press conference, told the SCMP that “the levels of antibodies generated by our vaccines are lower than mRNA vaccines, and the efficacy data are also , smaller”.
- “It’s a” natural conclusion that our inactivated vaccines and adenovirus vector vaccines are less effective “than mRNA vaccines, he said.
- But he added, “We should not wait until a perfect vaccine is available.”
By numbers: Gao said about 34 million people received “both doses of Chinese vaccines and about 65 million received one,” according to the AP.
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Editor’s note: This article has been updated with new details throughout.