Ng Han Guan AP
TAIPEI — The head of China’s Centers for Disease Control admitted that the efficacy of Chinese coronavirus vaccines is “not high” and they may require improvements, marking a rare admission from a government that has staked its international credibility on its doses.
The comments on Saturday from China CDC director George Gao comes after the government has already distributed hundreds of millions of doses to other countries, even though the rollout has been dogged by questions over why Chinese pharmaceutical firms have not released detailed clinical trial data about their efficacy.
China has struck deals to supply many of its allies and economic partners in the developing world and advertised the fact that world leaders from Indonesia to Pakistan to the United Arab Emirates have taken them.
There have been signs that some countries remain skeptical: the UAE recently experimented with administering three shots of the Chinese Sinopharm vaccine, instead of two, over reports of low numbers of antibodies produced in some people, while Singapore has stockpiled but not used its shipment of Sinovac shots.
[Third dose of Sinopharm coronavirus vaccine needed for some in UAE after low immune response]
Now, China is “formally considering” options to change its vaccines to “solve the problem that the efficacy of the existing vaccines is not high,” Gao told a conference in Chengdu in remarks that quickly spread through Chinese social media on Saturday before being mostly censored. Soon people were intentionally misspelling words in their posts while discussing the comments to keep them from being removed.
Gao added that one possibility was to adjust the dosage or increase the number of doses. He said another option was to mix vaccines that are made with different technologies, in an apparent admission that China needs to develop messenger RNA vaccines using the revolutionary genetic technology Western countries have harnessed.
The Chinese vaccine makers Sinopharm and Sinovac use a conventional method of producing vaccines that contain inactivated germs, while other countries’ offerings, including those by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, rely on a newfangled technique that uses messenger RNA (mRNA) to stimulate an immune response.
The mRNA vaccines are widely accepted as having higher efficacy rates, and China has predicted it would catch up and master mRNA technology soon.
Gao’s admission undercuts other arms of China’s government, including its propaganda organs and diplomats, who have spent months touting Chinese vaccines as part of a soft power push while aggressively sowing doubt about Western alternatives by questioning the efficacy and safety of mRNA technology.
Sinopharm, the state pharmaceutical giant, said this week it would begin clinical tests on a third vaccine. Company executives previously said in March that they were assessing whether to include a third booster shot as part of their vaccine’s standard regimen.
So far, more than 60 countries have approved at least one of China’s vaccines for use and they have been distributed widely, especially to lower income countries who have not been able to acquire the other vaccines snapped up by wealthier nations.
Sinopharm has reported a 79 percent efficacy rate in its vaccine — without releasing any data — while foreign trials for Sinovac have seen efficacy of just 50 percent in Brazil and over 80 percent in Turkey.
Yet even though both drugmakers carried out mass clinical trials earlier than most other countries last year, the data has not been still not been published in a peer-reviewed journal.
Foreigners traveling to China, however, have been encouraged to use these vaccines to enjoy streamlined access into the country.
In Turkey, where the Sinovac is in wide use, there has been little concern about the effectiveness of the vaccine, rather the worry has been that China won’t be able to deliver the promised 100 million doses amid delays in shipments.
Brazil, Egypt and other nations have also been clamoring for more doses as China has throttled back exports in the face of domestic demand even as cases have been surging worldwide.
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