After much fanfare about the new domestic Crown vaccine, which has been supplied to more than 60 countries, China has exposed a serious problem with the low rate of vaccination among Chinese, with EU Council President Michel saying Tuesday that the rate is already more than twice as low as in EU countries. Still less can it be compared to the United States and Israel. A Chinese research institute fears the world will be split in two by immunity strength, with China classified as a self-segregated world with no resistance.
Zhong Nanshan, an influential Chinese pneumonia expert, while emphasizing accelerated vaccination, disclosed a very grim figure: only 3.56 percent of Chinese are vaccinated, far below not only the US, Israel and the UK, but also much lower than the EU. Zhong Nanshan said China aims to have 40 percent of the population vaccinated by the end of July. Another Chinese expert, Zhang Wenhong, euphemistically told ‘health Times’ on March 7 that “because the Chinese population is so well protected, there is instead an ‘immunization gap'”.
Zhang Wenhong said that when the overall immunization rate in the United States exceeds 60%, the global Epidemic may end and restart, “the overall immunity is currently below 5%, so in this year, the vaccine is definitely needed.” Zhang Wenhong’s statement is interesting in that he said he is not worried about vaccine production, but about the speed and efficiency of vaccination. He said that even if 5 million doses of vaccine were administered daily, the task of reaching a 40 percent vaccination rate by the end of June would be daunting, and even if it were, it would still be less than half of China’s total population. In response to this “vaccination gap,” Zhang said, China will always be exposed and affected by imported cases if other countries do not do a good job of preventing and controlling outbreaks.
But Europe and the United States have another concern about such low vaccination rates in China, and the lingering threat to the world from the New crown outbreak if more than a billion Chinese are not universally immunized. Not only is it possible that the outbreak, which first broke out in Wuhan, China, will “fly” back to China, as it did, but there is also a serious question of how Chinese people who are not universally immunized will move around the world.
A study released recently by China’s Anbang think tank also seems to reflect Chinese concerns, saying, “The worrying thing is that China is actually ‘getting up early and catching a late one. Because of China’s relatively high-profile publicity on its epidemic prevention achievements, it announced ‘all kinds of successes’ early on …… This has made the world scientific and technical community less willing to cooperate with China to tide over the difficult times.”
Why is that? The study says China may have underestimated the danger of a “vaccine war,” and what is a “vaccine war”? “It’s a game that countries play for vaccines for a limited Time and around limited vaccine production capacity.” According to the report, “With the mass introduction of vaccines, the world is effectively divided into two parts: a world that has become resistant due to mass vaccination, with a normal economy and Life and an open social environment, and a world that is not resistant and has to sacrifice economic growth and social welfare and resort to strict quarantine. According to the study, “As long as this state of self-isolation is maintained for 1-2 years, a country’s economy and society are at risk of collapse.” The study says that, in general, “the future of China and Third World countries is worrisome,” concluding that “vaccination will divide the world into a resistant world and a non-resistant world, and that China cannot remain within the framework of social control to form security, but must join the resistant world. China cannot stay within the framework of social control to form a safe world, but must join the resistant world. The huge demand for vaccines in China will create a gap between vaccine production capacity, purchasing possibilities, and vaccination capacity, which may create a phase of difficulties. China cannot underestimate the danger of a “vaccine war.”
Is the Anbang think tank study a bit sensationalist? I don’t know. To say the least, Communist leaders overestimated China’s victory against the epidemic in the first place, failing to realize that the ultimate victory against the epidemic depends on the prevalence of immunity among the Chinese and, on a larger scale, the prevalence of immunity for all of humanity.
The criticism of China and Russia by EU Council President Michiel on Tuesday is Food for thought, as he questioned why China and Russia are using vaccines as a diplomatic tool instead of vaccinating such large populations in their own countries, making a big deal out of how they are helping to provide vaccines to more than 60 countries? The implication is that the two major powers, China and Russia, should not make a flashy show of getting their own epidemics sorted out and their own immunity dramatically improved, contributing more to the world than anything else.
The French newspaper Le Monde reported Tuesday that the problem in China now is one of capacity and one of whether the public trusts domestic vaccines. In other words, supply and demand are both issues. China is currently developing 17 vaccines, seven of which are in phase III trials, and four of which have been approved for marketing by Communist authorities. Two of them are produced by Sinopharm, the other two by Kexing and Kangxino Biologicals, and unlike the first three, the latter one requires only one injection.
China National says it has the capacity to produce 1 billion doses of the vaccine by 2021, or even “3 billion doses a year. However, that number is still a long way off, as Sinopharm’s two plants have an annual productivity of 220 million doses, according to Caixin, while Kexin says it can produce 2 billion doses of vaccine a year starting in June, four times more than its current capacity. Conxino, for its part, said it would double its current annual production capacity to 500 million doses.
Gao Fu, director of the CDC, who attended the two meetings, said China should have 70-80% of its population vaccinated by early next year, but subtly acknowledged that there is still a difference between theoretical production capacity and specific production capacity, as quality standards constitute a very “complex process.
Another issue is the trust of the Chinese in the domestic vaccine. Le Monde reports that the topic of vaccines is extremely sensitive in China, and that repeated vaccine scandals and fake drug scandals in the past have led to a very limited trust in Chinese medicines. It’s not unusual for you to hear a Chinese person praise how the government led the victory against the epidemic, but you might be hesitant to ask him if he would get a domestic vaccine. According to the Hong Kong ‘South China Morning Post’, a poll by the China Center for Disease Control and Prevention showed that less than 74 percent of the center’s workers in Beijing were willing to be vaccinated, and the higher the diploma, the less willing they were to get a domestic vaccine.
On January 12, the chairman and general manager of Sinopharm Holdings resigned on the same day for “personal reasons”, causing confusion, and the announced efficiency of the Kexing vaccine in Turkey was 91.25%, while in Brazil it was 50.38%, also causing anxiety. Bi Jingquan, who also criticized the company, said that companies should understand that the more public their information is, the better. Revealing all your information is the only way to strengthen public trust. Another reason is that there are almost no new confirmed cases in China, which also makes people reluctant to get vaccinated.
How to convince the Chinese people to voluntarily vaccinate may require the Communist Party’s leaders to lead by example. The Chinese media has gone to great lengths to report how foreign heads of state have taken the lead in vaccinating against China, but neither Communist Party President Xi Jinping nor Premier Li Keqiang have yet to extend their arms.
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