BEIJING (AP) – In a rare admission of the weakness of Chinese coronavirus vaccines, the country’s leading disease control official says their effectiveness is low and the government plans to mix them up to give them a boost.
Chinese vaccines “do not have very high protection rates,” Gao Fu, director of China’s Centers for Disease Control, told a conference in the southwestern city of Chengdu on Saturday.
Beijing has distributed hundreds of millions of doses to other countries, while trying to raise doubts about the effectiveness of Western vaccines.
“It is now being formally examined whether we should use different vaccines from different technical lines for the immunization process,” Gao said.
Researchers in Brazil have found that the effectiveness rate of a coronavirus vaccine from Sinovac, a Chinese developer in preventing symptomatic infections, is up to 50.4%. By comparison, the vaccine produced by Pfizer was found to be 97% effective.
Beijing has not yet approved any foreign vaccine for use in China, where the coronavirus appeared in late 2019.
Gao did not provide details on possible strategy changes, but mentioned mRNA, an experimental technique previously used by Western vaccine developers, while Chinese drug manufacturers used traditional technology.
“Everyone should consider the benefits that mRNA vaccines can bring to humanity,” Gao said. “We need to watch it carefully and not just ignore it because we already have several types of vaccines.”
Gao has previously raised questions about the safety of mRNA vaccines. He was quoted by the official Xinhua news agency as saying in December that he could not rule out negative side effects because they were first used on healthy people.
Chinese state media and popular health and science blogs have questioned the safety and effectiveness of the Pfizer vaccine, which uses mRNA.
As of April 2, about 34 million people have received both doses of Chinese vaccines and about 65 million have received one, according to Gao.
Experts say that mixing vaccines or sequential immunization could increase efficacy rates. Studies around the world are looking at mixing vaccines or administering a booster vaccine over a longer period of time. Researchers in the UK are studying a possible combination of Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines.