“The protection rates of existing vaccines are not high,” Gao Fu, director of China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention, told a conference in the southwestern city of Chengdu on Saturday.
He mentioned two options for solving the problem: one is to increase the number of doses, or to adjust the dose or the interval between shots; the other is to mix vaccines developed based on different technologies.
China has positioned itself as a leader in the development and distribution of Covid-19 vaccines, promoting and supplying its vaccines to countries around the world, including Indonesia, Zimbabwe, Turkey and Brazil.
“More than 60 countries have approved the use of a Chinese vaccine. The safety and efficacy of the Chinese vaccine is widely recognized by several countries,” said Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi at a news conference in March.
However, the relatively low efficacy of Chinese vaccines could hamper credibility and erode Beijing’s so-called vaccine diplomacy.
The two pharmaceutical companies that supply most of the Chinese Covid-19 vaccines to the world have not published extensive clinical research data in medical journals on the effectiveness of their vaccines. But the interim results announced by the companies are falling far short of the new type of vaccines being developed in the West that use mRNA to trigger an immune response.
The CoronaVac vaccine, developed by Sinovac, a private company, was found to have an efficacy rate of only 50.4% in clinical trials in Brazil. Another study in Turkey showed that it was 83.5% effective. State-owned Sinopharm said the two vaccines have efficacy rates of 79.4% and 72.5%.
In comparison, the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines have efficacy rates of 97% and 94%, respectively.
In this sense, Gao’s comments about the relatively low efficacy of Chinese vaccines were just a known fact – but it was the first time that a senior official in China had publicly acknowledged this.
“What struck me most was that the suggestion of the relatively low efficacy of Chinese vaccines appears to be a deviation from what the Chinese state and social media have said. The official story describes Chinese vaccines as both safe and effective,” said Yanzhong Huang. , a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, who posted Gao’s speech to Twitter last weekend.
As Gao’s comments became popular on social media and made international headlines, Chinese censors quickly scrubbed down online discussions, and state media quickly posted an interview with Gao to back down his comments.
“The protection rates of all the vaccines in the world are sometimes high and sometimes low. How to improve their effectiveness is a question that needs to be considered by scientists around the world,” said Gao.
Huang, China’s public health expert, said the Global Times’ swift rejection suggested that the Chinese authorities will not tolerate any challenge from their official narrative.
“Gao’s comments were just an occasional deviation,” he said.
Additional reporting by Reuters.