Chinese Official Questions Efficacy of Domestic COVID Vaccines, Sparking Global Concerns

The effectiveness of Chinese vaccines is low. This is the conclusion that emerged from the press conference that Gao Fu, director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, held last Saturday in the city of Chengdu, in southwest China. This expert compared Chinese vaccines to those made using the messenger RNA process, such as Pfizer-BioNTech, reports AP. Based on this finding, China has decided to mix vaccines to strengthen them. "The question of whether we should use different vaccines from different technical lines for the vaccination process is now officially under study," the Chinese scientist said.

According to another official from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Wang Huaqing, Chinese developers are working on messenger RNA vaccines. "The mRNA vaccines developed in our country have also entered the clinical trial phase," he said, without providing details on a possible use. According to experts, the mixing of vaccines, or sequential immunization, is likely to enhance their effectiveness. In the UK, researchers are working on a possible combination of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and the traditional AstraZeneca vaccine.

Furthermore, a study by Brazilian researchers shows that the effectiveness of the Chinese Sinovac vaccine in preventing symptomatic infections does not exceed 50%, which is close to the 50% threshold above which health experts consider a vaccine useful. As for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, it has proven to be 97% effective.