As the world stages a vaccine scramble, China has engaged in vaccine diplomacy with great fanfare, providing free aid to 53 countries for vaccines made in China. But the fact is that none of China’s vaccines in the global vaccine development race have so far passed the World health Organization’s emergency use (WHO EUL/PQ evaluation process) review process. Some commentators say that China must seek cooperation with other countries to obtain experimental data to hand over to WHO for approval.
It is not an exaggeration to say that Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor has shown patriotism with her Life.
On February 22, Carrie Lam asked a nurse to put a shot of the Sinovac Biotech (China) vaccine into her left arm. However, in response to an email inquiry from Radio Free Asia, the World Health Organization (WHO) said that as of Feb. 16, it was still waiting for Sinovac to submit complete clinical trial data.
In response to the new pneumonia pandemic, each country has its own emergency authorization mechanism for vaccines. For example, China’s State Drug Administration recently approved the inactivated vaccine developed by Sinopharm and Kexing Biologicals, while the United States approved emergency authorization for the vaccine developed by Pfizer and Germany‘s BioNTech and Moderna.
China’s wild push for vaccine diplomacy stands up to international standards?
However, the Chinese Foreign Ministry made a high-profile announcement in early January this year that China would provide 10 million doses of the new crown pneumonia vaccine from the international vaccine platform COVAX, which exposed the Chinese vaccine to international standard testing procedures.
According to the WHO mechanism, in order to enter the COVAX platform and become the so-called “public property of the world’s people,” Chinese vaccines must pass the WHO emergency use audit.
A WHO spokesman confirmed to the station that only Sinopharm BIBP of China National Pharmaceutical Group has completed the procedure of submitting all the data files for Chinese vaccines, and WHO is reviewing them and expects to have the results in March at the earliest. However, WHO has not yet received the information originally expected to be submitted by China Ke Xing in February, and CanSino will not submit the data until April.
It can be inferred that the reaction and data of the vaccination of Carrie Lam is likely to be one of the experimental data submitted to WHO afterwards. WHO told the station that the relevant data is confidential according to the regulations, but WHO has a rigorous review mechanism, and the evaluation process goes through five hurdles of inspection before it can become a member of the COVAX vaccine platform to provide to countries around the world.
In other words, China’s claim to provide 10 million doses of vaccine to the COVAX platform is unlikely to be implemented until at least March, when the WHO audit is approved.
Currently, in addition to Pfizer, vaccines from Oxford University in the United Kingdom, AstraZeneca in collaboration with South Korea, and the Serum Institute of India are eligible to provide vaccines to the COVAX platform after passing the WHO emergency use audit. The U.S. Merdner vaccine is under review and the results are expected by the end of February.
Chinese vaccine lacks testing environment.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said today that China is currently providing free vaccine assistance to 53 countries that need it. It is also exporting vaccines to 27 countries that are willing to buy Chinese vaccines.
Xia Ming, a professor of political science at the City University of New York, then told the station that China’s attempt to reinvent itself is nice talk, but it’s really China’s need for foreign cooperation to have enough data on its subjects to be able to complete the last mile of international certification.
“China’s vaccine diplomacy, to some extent, is the need to get more voluntary cooperative populations with more data to make his vaccine reliable. At the same Time, the virus is still mutating, so that’s why he’s working with many Latin American countries and African countries, like South Africa, to improve his vaccine.” Xia Ming told reporters.
On the one hand, Xia Ming said, China’s fascist-style Epidemic prevention reached the goal of having success in preventing the epidemic, and with the epidemic under proper control, the Chinese vaccine was left without an experimental environment. On the other hand, the poor image of Chinese vaccine quality is so deeply imprinted in the minds of the Chinese people that it is certainly difficult to find subjects in the country.
In the United States, people who agree to undergo vaccine trials sign a voluntary consent form first, and in some cases, may be compensated with what looks like transportation costs.
However, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs has made it clear that China’s vaccine research and development needs subjects, but instead, it says that China is showing the spirit of “people drowning themselves and people starving themselves”. When it is time to call for international help, it does not do so in order to save face, which may lead to the death of Chinese people.
China’s vaccination rate is only 1%, and 100 million doses of Pfizer vaccines have been purchased.
According to an article published in January by ANBOUND, a Chinese research institute, China is now facing a shortage of production capacity and purchasing power, and is in danger of underestimating the “vaccine war”. China needs to accelerate its pace to avoid being classified as a “world without immunity” due to insufficient vaccination.
The article points out that China’s vaccines rely mainly on several companies, including Kexing Zhongwei, Guoxing Pharmaceuticals and Kangxino; as for imported vaccines, only Fosun Group buys a certain amount of imported vaccines.
Fosun Pharmaceuticals is the agent of Pfizer vaccines in Greater China, and Fosun issued a press release late last year stating that BioNTech expects to provide at least 100 million doses of vaccines in mainland China this year.
The Anbang Intelligence article then cited data from the Chinese State Council’s Joint Prevention and Control Mechanism on Jan. 20 that as of that time, the number of vaccinations in China was just over 15 million, or just 1 percent of the population.
In contrast, in the United States, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention CDC, as of February 22, more than 44 million people had received the first dose of vaccine, with a vaccination rate of 13.3% and a rate of 16.9% for those over 18 years old; more than 19 million people had completed two doses, with a vaccination rate of 5.9% and a rate of 7.5% for those over 18 years old.
It is said that diplomacy is an extension of domestic affairs, but which is more important to China, improving its international image or saving the lives of its people? In an article by Anbang Intelligence, it is cautioned that China must avoid “getting up too early and catching up too late.
But even if the Chinese vaccine is certified for emergency use by the WHO, will the Chinese people dare to take the domestic vaccine?
He Fangmei is the parent of a child victim of the Chinese vaccine, whose daughter was disabled after receiving the Chinese Wuhan Biologicals vaccine. This most vocal Chinese citizen, who defended her daughter’s rights during her pregnancy, was detained in Hui County, Henan Province, and her whereabouts are still unknown.
Before she was disappeared she had firmly told this station, as many Parents of Chinese vaccine victims do, that “Chinese vaccines are not guaranteed, and whoever gets them is finished.”
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