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LIVE: Low Efficacy of Chinese Shots Sows Concern on Global Rollout | Top News
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April 14, 2021
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11:54:56Now Playing(Apr. 13) Concern is mounting that China’s Covid-19 vaccines are less effective at quelling the disease, raising questions about nations from Brazil to Hungary that are depending on the shots and the country’s own mammoth inoculation drive.
While vaccines developed by Pfizer Inc., Moderna Inc. and even Russia’s Sputnik shot have delivered protection rates of more than 90%, Chinese candidates have generally reported much lower efficacy results. Research released Sunday showed the rate for Sinovac Biotech Ltd.’s vaccine -- deployed in Indonesia and Brazil -- was just above 50%, barely meeting the minimum protection required for Covid vaccines by leading global drug regulators. Other Chinese shots have reported efficacy rates from 66% to 79%.
Anxiety over the disparity spilled into the open at the weekend when George Fu Gao, head of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said at a forum that something needed to be done to address the low protection rate provided by Chinese vaccines, according to local news outlet the Paper.
The rare admission by a senior official appeared to go viral on social media before China’s censors swung into action, with posts and media reports about Gao’s comments quickly edited or taken down. Gao then backtracked, telling state-backed newspaper the Global Times on Sunday that his remarks were misinterpreted, and were only meant to suggest ways to improve the efficacy of vaccines.
Gao suggested that following up inoculations with additional booster shots and mixing different types of vaccines could help tackle the effectiveness issue, according to the Global Times.
The concerns put a question mark over a vast swathe of the global vaccine rollout, particularly in the developing world, with richer countries’ domination of supplies of the highly effective mRNA vaccines seeing nations like Turkey and Indonesia turn instead to China’s shots.
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