Hong Kong said residents will be allowed to choose which Covid-19 vaccine they want to take as the city added a third candidate to its arsenal with the agreement to buy photos from AstraZeneca Plc.
The city has reached an agreement with AstraZeneca for 7.5 million doses of its Covid-19 vaccine, chief executive Carrie Lam said on Wednesday. The agreement joins agreements similar to Pfizer Inc.—BioNTech SE and Chinese developer Sinovac Biotech Ltd., providing the city with a total of 22.5 million potential doses of vaccines. Hong Kong is looking for another 7.5 million doses, and residents will be given the choice of vaccine to take, according to Lam.
While this move will address the concerns of impatient residents regarding the administration of a Chinese vaccine, it also raises the prospect of a run over certain photos. The three candidates are very different and none of them has yet been approved for use in the city, which is enduring the fourth wave of the pandemic. In an attempt to encourage the administration of vaccines, Lam said on Wednesday that the government will set up a fund to provide financial support to patients with side effects.
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The Pfizer vaccine, whose data indicates a 95% protection rate against Covid-19, uses a new technology called messenger RNA that turns the body’s own cells into vaccine-producing factories to fight the coronavirus. While the shot is considered safe, some serious allergic reactions have been reported.
Sinovac’s image is made using an inactivated version of the coronavirus that is said to be the first human immune system to fight it. The vaccine has been shown to be more than 50% more effective in a Brazilian clinical trial, though researchers delayed the release of more information at the company’s request. The AstraZeneca vaccine has the most supply offerings in the world, but the initial clinical results were mixed.
Lam said on Wednesday that the government has appointed a committee to approve the emergency use of vaccines, noting that the city is approaching the authorization of candidates.
Countries that do not have the capacity to independently validate experimental drug therapies often rely on reviews from top medical authorities worldwide, such as the US Food and Drug Administration. The Pfizer-BioNTech image has so far been approved in the US and the European Union Singapore approved it last week.
Bloomberg reported earlier this month that Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical Group Co., the Chinese company with rights to market the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in Hong Kong, was preparing to seek approval for the shooting shortly after the US eliminated it.
(Updates to Sinovac test results in the fifth paragraph)