TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) – With rich countries supplying COVID-19 vaccines, parts of the world may have to rely on fires developed in China to try to conquer the outbreak. Question: Will they work?
There’s no outside reason to believe they won’t, but China has a history of vaccine scandals, and its drugmakers have revealed little about their latest human trials and the more than 1 million emergency vaccinations they have. they are said to have been carried out inside the country already.
Rich nations have set aside about 9 billion of the 12 billion photographs developed in most of the West, which are expected to be produced next year, while COVAX, a global effort to ensure equal access to COVID-19 vaccines, of It promised a capacity of 2 billion doses.
For those countries that have not yet secured a vaccine, China may be the only solution.
China has six candidates in the final stages of its studies and is one of the few nations that can manufacture vaccines on a large scale. Government officials announced a capacity of 1 billion doses next year, with President Xi Jinping vowing that China’s vaccines will be a benefit to the world.
The potential use of the vaccine by millions of people in other countries offers China an opportunity both to repair the damage to its reputation from an outbreak that has escaped its borders and to show the world that it can be a major scientific player.
However, past scandals have affected the confidence of its own citizens in its vaccines, with production and supply chain issues questioning whether it can really be a savior.
“It remains a question of how China can ensure the delivery of reliable vaccines,” said Joy Zhang, a professor studying emerging science ethics at the University of Kent in the United Kingdom. She cited China’s “lack of transparency in scientific data and a troubled history of vaccine delivery.”
Bahrain last week became the second country to approve a Chinese COVID-19 vaccine by joining the United Arab Emirates. Morocco plans to use Chinese vaccines in a mass immunization campaign scheduled to begin this month. Chinese vaccines are also awaiting approval in Turkey, Indonesia and Brazil, while testing continues in more than a dozen countries, including Russia, Egypt and Mexico.
In some countries, Chinese vaccines are viewed with suspicion. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has repeatedly cast doubt on the effectiveness of the Chinese vaccine candidate Sinovac without citing any evidence and said Brazilians will not be used as “guinea pigs”.
Many experts praise China’s vaccination capabilities.
“The studies appear to be well done,” said Jamie Triccas, head of immunology and infectious diseases at the University of Sydney Medical School, referring to the results of clinical trials published in scientific journals. “I wouldn’t be too worried about that.”
China has been building its immunization programs for more than a decade. He has produced widely successful vaccines for his own population, including measles and hepatitis vaccinations, said Jin Dong-yan, a medical professor at the University of Hong Kong.
“There are no major outbreaks in China for any of these diseases,” he said. “That means vaccines are safe and effective.”
China has worked with the Gates Foundation and others to improve the quality of production over the past decade. The World Health Organization has pre-qualified five non-COVID-19 Chinese vaccines, allowing UN agencies to buy them for other countries.
Companies whose products have earned prequalification include Sinovac and Sinopharm State, both leading developers of COVID-19 vaccines.
However, the Wuhan Institute of Organic Products, a Sinopharm subsidiary behind one of the COVID-19 candidates, was caught in a vaccine scandal in 2018.
Government inspectors found that the company, based in the city where the coronavirus was first detected last year, made hundreds of thousands of ineffective doses of combined vaccine for diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough due to a malfunction of the equipment.
In the same year, it was reported that Changsheng Biotechnology Co. falsified data about a rabies vaccine.
In 2016, Chinese media revealed that 2 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 local Chinese friends have white collars, they are fine, and none of them will buy Chinese-made medicines. That’s right, “said Ray Yip, former country director of the Gates Foundation in China. He said he was one of the few who did not mind buying pharmaceuticals from China.
China revised its laws in 2017 and 2019 to restrict vaccine storage management and intensify inspections and sanctions for defective vaccines.
Leading COVID-19 vaccine developers in the country have published several scientific findings in peer-reviewed scientific journals. But international experts have questioned how China recruited volunteers and what kind of follow-up there was for possible side effects. Chinese companies and government officials did not release details.
Now, after the publication of data on the effectiveness of vaccines manufactured in the West developed by Pfizer and Moderna, experts are waiting to see the Chinese results. Regulators in the United Arab Emirates, where a Sinopharm vaccine was tested, said they appear to be 86% effective based on intermediate data from clinical trials. On Thursday, the Turkish government announced that Sinovac is 91.25% efficient from the interim data.
Sinopharm did not respond to a request for comment on vaccine efficacy data. Sinovac and CanSino, another Chinese vaccination company, did not respond to requests for an interview.
For some people in countries where the pandemic shows no signs of relaxation, the home nation of a vaccine does not matter.
“I intend to take 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 us.”
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Associated Press writers David Biller of Rio de Janeiro and María Verza of Mexico City contributed to this report.