Hong Kong said residents are allowed to choose which Covid-19 vaccine they want to take, as the city has added a third candidate to its arsenal with an agreement to buy shots from AstraZeneca Plc.
The city has reached an agreement with AstraZeneca for 7.5 million doses of the Covid-19 vaccine, CEO Carrie Lam said at a news conference on Wednesday. The deal joins similar agreements Pfizer Inc.-BioNTech SE and Chinese developer Sinovac Biotech Ltd., giving the city a total of 22.5 million potential doses of vaccines. Hong Kong is looking for another 7.5 million doses, and Lam says residents will be given a choice of which vaccine to take.
While the move allays the concerns of residents fearful of taking a Chinese vaccine, it also raises the chances of a run on certain shots. The three candidates are very different from each other and none of them have yet been approved for use in the city, which is experiencing the fourth wave of the pandemic. In an effort to encourage the use of the vaccines, Lam said on Wednesday that the government will set up a fund to provide financial support to patients who experience side effects.
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Pfizer’s vaccine, which 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 plants to fight the coronavirus. While the shot is considered safe, there have been some reports of serious allergic reactions.
Sinovac’s inclusion was made using an inactivated version of the coronavirus that is said to stimulate the human immune system to fight it. The vaccine was found to be more than 50% effective in a Brazilian clinical trial, although researchers did delayed release of more information at the request of the company. AstraZeneca’s vaccine has the most supply agreements in the world, but initial clinical results have been mixed.
Lam said on Wednesday that the government has appointed a committee to approve emergency use of the vaccines, indicating the city is moving closer to authorizing the candidates.
Countries that lack the capacity to independently validate experimental drug therapies often rely on reviews from world-leading drug authorities, such as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The Pfizer-BioNTech shot has been approved in the US and the European Union to date Singapore approved it last week.
Bloomberg reported this earlier this month Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical Group Co., the Chinese company with the rights to market the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in Hong Kong, was preparing to seek approval of the shot shortly after the US approved it.
(Updates with Sinovac’s test results in the fifth paragraph)