Brazilian indigenous residents are waiting in São Paulo to receive vaccines provided by the Chinese company Kexing Biopharmaceuticals. Brazilian officials have complained that the Chinese company has been slow to ship vaccines and raw materials.
China’s new coronavirus vaccine was supposed to give it a geopolitical victory while demonstrating its scientific prowess and generosity. But in some places, the Chinese vaccine has instead provoked a strong boycott.
Officials in Brazil and Turkey have complained that Chinese companies have been slow to ship vaccines and raw materials. Disclosures about Chinese vaccines have been sporadic and slow. The few announcements that have circulated suggest that the Chinese vaccine, while considered effective, is less capable of stopping the virus than vaccines from U.S. drugmakers Pfizer and Moderna.
Some lawmakers in the Philippines have criticized the government’s decision to buy the Chinese Koxin vaccine. In Malaysia and Singapore, which have ordered vaccines from Coxing, officials have had to reassure their citizens that they will only approve the use of the vaccine if it is proven to be safe and effective.
“As of now, I won’t be getting any Chinese vaccine because there is not enough data,” said Bilahari Kausikan, an influential former Singapore Foreign Ministry official. He added that he would consider Chinese vaccines only after “a report that is in line with the rules” is available.
At least 24 countries, most of them low- and middle-income, have signed purchase agreements with Chinese vaccine companies because Pfizer and Modena vaccines have been ordered out of rich countries and Chinese companies say they have supplies available. But the slow supply of Chinese vaccines and the fact that they are ineffective means that it may take longer for these countries to get the virus under control.
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One of Kexing’s labs in Beijing. The world was caught a bit off guard by the revelation that the Kexing vaccine may not be as effective as previously believed.
Chinese officials had hoped that a domestically produced vaccine would boost China’s global reputation, but now they are taking a defensive stance. Meanwhile, official Communist Party media launched a disinformation campaign against U.S. vaccines, questioning the safety of Pfizer and Modena vaccines and touting Chinese vaccines as better alternatives. The official Chinese media also posted videos online that have been shared by the anti-vaccine movement in the United States.
Liu Xin, an anchor for the official China Global Television Network, asked on Twitter why foreign media had not done “follow-up reports” on some people in Germany who died after a single vaccination, even though scientists said the people themselves were seriously ill. Liu Xin’s tweet was retweeted by Zhao Lijian, a leading spokesman for the Chinese Communist Party‘s Foreign Ministry.
Gao Fu, director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, also expressed doubts about the safety of the U.S. vaccine because its developers used new technology rather than the traditional methods used by Chinese manufacturers.
China had hoped its vaccine would prove it had become a scientific and diplomatic powerhouse. China is on par with the United States in the number of vaccines approved for emergency use or in late-stage clinical trials. Both state-owned vaccine maker Sinopharm and privately held Kexing have said they could produce up to 2 billion doses of the vaccine this year, making them crucial to the global effort to fight the new coronavirus.
Unlike Pfizer and Modena’s vaccines, China’s vaccines can be stored at refrigerated temperatures, making them easier for shipping, which makes them attractive in developing countries. Chinese vaccines have been shipped as aid to countries such as Pakistan and the Philippines.
However, China’s vaccine diplomacy has been plagued by mistrust. Many people still remember the Chinese vaccine scandal. Some governments are still angry at Beijing’s lack of openness in the early days of the New crown outbreak. China’s efforts to provide masks and protective gear to Western countries were criticized early last year amid reports that the items it provided were of poor quality and incidents in which Chinese officials asked foreign countries to publicly express their gratitude.
A YouGov survey of about 19,000 people in 17 countries and territories this month showed that most people are skeptical of the new coronavirus vaccine made in China. The false propaganda surrounding the Western vaccine could further damage its image.
Delayed shipments to places like Brazil and Turkey are the latest difficulty.
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The first shipment of Coxin vaccine arrived in Turkey on Dec. 30 last year.
Koxin had initially promised the Turkish government to ship 10 million doses of the vaccine to the country last December. But according to Turkish health Minister Fahrettin Koca, only 3 million doses arrived in early January this year. He did not explain the reasons for this gap. Opposition politicians have already criticized this. The missing doses of vaccines finally arrived on Monday, according to Turkey’s official news agency Anadolu.
In a statement, the Communist Party’s foreign ministry cited the issue of domestic demand as the new coronavirus has re-emerged in the country.
“Currently, there is a huge domestic demand for vaccines,” the foreign ministry statement said. “While meeting the domestic demand, we are overcoming difficulties and finding ways to implement President Xi Jinping‘s important declaration with practical actions to carry out international cooperation on vaccines in different ways with other countries, especially developing countries, and provide support and assistance within our capacity according to their needs.”
Sporadic outbreaks of domestic outbreaks may also have hampered production. Kexing, which declined to comment, said online on Friday it was looking for workers for a factory in the Beijing area where an outbreak had scared off people looking for work.
Countries such as Turkey and Brazil are rolling out vaccination programs using the Coxin vaccine because Western companies can’t deliver it quickly enough for those countries. But Brazil’s efforts have also been delayed. Brazil’s Health Minister Eduardo Pazuello said China is not moving quickly enough to approve the documents needed to export raw materials to Brazil.
“We are taking strong action at the diplomatic level to find where the resistance is and to get the issue resolved,” Pazuello said at a Jan. 17 news conference.
Last Wednesday, Brazilian House Speaker Rodrigo Maia told reporters that he had met with the Chinese ambassador to Brazil, who “made it clear that there are no political obstacles, just a little delay in the technical process.
Vaccines from other countries are beginning to fill the gap. Brazil’s health ministry announced last Thursday that 2 million doses of the previously delayed Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine would arrive in Brazil from India the following day.
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A health worker in Indonesia delivers a container containing Coxin vaccine. Local officials had initially said that the Koxin vaccine was 68 percent effective.
Also, the world was caught a bit off guard by the news that the Coxin vaccine may not be as effective as previously believed. Turkish officials had said earlier that local clinical trials had shown the Coxin vaccine to be 91 percent effective. Clinical trials in Indonesia showed 68 percent. Researchers in Brazil had initially said the Coxin vaccine was 78 percent effective.
Then, on Jan. 12, scientists said the vaccine was only slightly more than 50 percent effective when people with mild symptoms were included. That effectiveness rate is only a tiny bit higher than the effective threshold set by the World Health Organization for the vaccine. At a press conference last week, KXB CEO Yin Weidong reiterated that the company’s vaccine is 100 percent effective in preventing moderate to severe cases. He said the low effectiveness rate was due to the fact that clinical trials were conducted mainly among medical professionals, who are more likely to contract the new coronavirus disease than the general population.
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, a critic of China and its neo-coronavirus vaccine, seized on the data to make a big deal of it. on Jan. 13, he mocked the effectiveness of the Coxin vaccine, asking a supporter, “Is 50 percent considered good?”
Of course, China’s vaccine has great appeal to many countries. The Communist Party’s Foreign Ministry says more than 40 countries have expressed interest in importing Chinese vaccines. Several world leaders, including Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Indonesian President Joko Widodo, have been vaccinated with the Koxin vaccine.
However, sporadic and inconsistent disclosures about Chinese vaccines remain a problem. Sinopharm, for example, has said that a vaccine candidate produced by its Beijing Institute of Biological Products has a 79 percent efficacy rate, but has not disclosed key details. Sinopharm did not respond to a reporter’s request for comment.
Hong Kong, a special administrative region of China, has ordered 7.5 million doses of the Kexin vaccine, but Hong Kong officials have not received an emergency use request from the company or any data from it.
“I don’t know if this is because they haven’t produced enough vaccine or because they don’t have plans to send it to Hong Kong yet,” said Dr. Liu Zexing, convener of the Hong Kong government’s 2019 Coronavirus Vaccine Advisory Expert Committee.
Data disclosure is also problematic in the Philippines. The Philippines has picked up 25 million doses of the Coxin vaccine. Opposition lawmaker Risa Hontiveros said President Rodrigo Duterte’s administration “continues to impose their preference for Chinese-made vaccines on the public when no emergency use has been approved and data is inconsistent “.
Senator and opposition leader Leila de Lima, who is currently in prison, expressed outrage that the price paid by the government to Coxin was $61 per dose, more than double the price paid by Coxin’s partners in Indonesia. The presidential administration claims the price was inflated, but they cannot reveal the actual price because of a confidentiality agreement.
Despite the uncertainty, many people may have no choice.
“I will get the Chinese vaccine,” said Kayihan Pala, a member of the Turkish Medical Association’s (TMA) New Coronavirus Disease Surveillance Committee. “I’m waiting for my turn because there’s no other option.”
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