The director of China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention said on Saturday that authorities are considering mixing COVID-19 vaccines because the country’s domestically made doses “do not have very high levels of protection,” the AP said.
Why it matters: The Gao Fu’s comments at a press conference in the southwestern city of Chengdumark mark the first time that a Chinese health official has spoken publicly about the low efficacy of vaccines being made in China.
Driving the news: Gao said officials were looking at two options designed “to solve the problem that the efficacy of … existing vaccines is not high,” according to the South China Morning Post.
- One is to mix vaccines, known as “sequential immunization,” and the other is to “adjust the dose, increase the interval between doses, or increase the number of doses,” reports the SCMP.
The intrigue: Experts say mixing vaccines “can increase effectiveness,” AP notes.
- Scientists in the UK are conducting clinical studies on the admixture of Oxford University-AstraZeneca and Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines.
The big picture: The Chinese government has only approved locally produced vaccines for use against the virus.
- Sinopharm announced just before his coronavirus vaccine was approved late last year that his vaccine was 79.3% effective, although experts said important data was missing.
- The Chinese health regulator approved Sinovac’s vaccine last February. Several phase 3 studies in Brazil, Turkey and Indonesia have shown efficacy from 50.38% to 91.25%, notes Shawna Chen of Axios.
Of interest: Gao said “everyone should consider the benefits” of mRNA vaccines, which are being used by Western drug manufacturers as a cure for the pandemic, but not by their counterparts in China, AP reports.
What they say: Tao Lina, a Shanghai-based 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 is also lower.”
- It is a “natural conclusion that our inactivated vaccines and vaccines with adenovirus vectors are less effective” than mRNA vaccines, he said.
- But he added, “We shouldn’t wait for a perfect vaccine to be available.”
In numbers: Gao said about 34 million people “have received both of the two doses needed for Chinese vaccines and about 65 million,” AP said.
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Editor’s Note: This article has been updated with new details throughout.