Less than a year after the emergence of the new crown epidemic in the United States, two vaccines that have received authoritative approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are already being administered in the United States to key priority populations. The U.S. government recently plans to order billions of doses of the vaccine in an effort to reach universal coverage and free vaccination capacity for all by next June.
In contrast, China, which was earlier described by Chinese official media as potentially “winning the global vaccine race” and even engaging in “vaccine diplomacy,” still has an unclear vaccination schedule and is not recognized by international standards for its reliability and effectiveness. Experts are concerned that China may be lagging behind the U.S. and European countries in achieving herd immunity against the new coronavirus.
Data: U.S. Vaccine Supply Adequate, China Vaccination Schedule Uncertain
The data show a positive outlook for vaccine supply capacity in the United States. China, on the other hand, has yet to release reliable official data on vaccination coverage.
A week after the U.S. FDA approved the emergency authorization for the messenger RNA vaccine jointly developed by U.S. pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and BioNTech on Dec. 11, the U.S. biotech industry’s “new kid on the block” Moderna received FDA approval on Dec. 18 for its emergency authorization for the new crown vaccine.
Data show that current U.S. orders for the vaccine are sufficient to meet the universal vaccination requirement.
The Launch and Scale Speedometer project at Duke University’s Global health Innovation Center tracks and counts the global availability of the Neocon vaccine. Data from the project as of Dec. 18 show that the U.S. government currently has a firm order for 1.11 billion doses of the new crown vaccine, with potential capacity for an additional 1.5 billion doses.
The project’s statistics say that with a U.S. population of 330 million people requiring two doses of vaccine per person, the U.S. vaccination capacity would be 184 to 443 percent of population coverage.
The head of the Trump administration-led “Operation Curve” vaccine research and development program said earlier this month that by next June, all Americans who wish to receive the new crown vaccine will have access to it. Moncef Slaoui, the project’s chief adviser, told the media on Dec. 1 that the U.S. “will have the new coronavirus epidemic under control in the second half of 2021.
According to Duke University, countries and regions that also have high vaccination capacity include Canada (505%-580%), the United Kingdom (290%-420%), the European Union (199%-264%), Israel (122%-177%), New Zealand (165%-226%), Australia (226%), Hong Kong (117%) and Japan (115%).
Countries such as the U.S. are able to obtain sufficient vaccine supply partly because the new generation of mRNA vaccine technology does not depend on cell expansion and has the advantage of short production time and easy mass production. In contrast, although the traditional inactivated vaccines that China is currently focusing on are technically mature, the production process requires cell and virus culture and the establishment of virulent strains, making capacity scaling difficult.
50 million people vaccinated before the Spring Festival? Most of the 600 million domestic vaccines are exported
As the deployment of vaccines such as Pfizer begins in earnest in Europe and the United States, concerns about China falling into an “immunization gap” have surfaced in Chinese media reports.
Public health experts argue that China’s current new epidemic is small compared to Europe and the United States and that the need for vaccination is not urgent at this time, but if China lags behind in its vaccination deployment and fails to meet the 70 percent immunization threshold for its population, it could fall into the “immunization gap” dilemma.
An analysis published in China Newsweek on Dec. 11 said, “Before November, the overall need for vaccines was not very urgent because there were few cases in China. …… But if vaccines are now being successfully developed and mass vaccinated first in Western countries, the immunization gap for China could become a real reality. The gap, however, could actually become a reality.”
The article says that even according to the estimates of China’s Health Care Commission – with an annual production capacity of 610 million doses of the new domestic crown vaccine by the end of the year and 1 billion doses next year – even if all of it is used for domestic vaccination, two doses per person, there will only be enough to vaccinate 805 million people by the end of next year, which is only 58 percent of the entire population That’s only 58 percent of the population.
Earlier, in a public statement earlier this month, Wang Junzhi, a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and deputy head of the vaccine research and development task force under the State Council, said that “600 million inactivated vaccines will be approved for sale in China within the year. But according to the Wall Street Journal, these vaccines will be exported primarily, with about 100 million of them reserved for the vaccination of 50 million people at home.
Huang Yanzhong, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, also offered a related warning. He told the Voice of America, “Right now it looks like China is talking about 610 million vaccines being produced by the end of the year and reaching more than a billion doses next year. There may still be a gap according to the standard of 70% herd immunization that we are talking about.”
Zhang Wenhong, head of the Shanghai New Crown Pneumonia Medical Treatment Expert Group and director of the Infection Department at Huashan Hospital of Fudan University, said that until China implements universal vaccination, “strengthening anti-epidemic” and “precise prevention and control” are still the options of the moment.
In the long run, vaccination is imperative to achieve herd immunity and return to normal economic and social life, according to the analysis.
Zhang Wenhong was quoted in Chinese media as saying, “Only through adequate vaccine protection can our population improve its herd immunity to the new coronavirus and avoid international immunization gaps that could affect effective international exchanges.”
Kalipso Chalkidou, head of global health policy and senior research fellow at the Center for Global Development in London, U.K., said some Asian countries are doing well with “non-pharmaceutical interventions” (NPI) such as testing, tracking and isolation, and their vaccination programs will be different from those in Europe and the United States.
But she also stressed to VOA that “nevertheless, all countries must vaccinate their citizens if they are to open their borders and allow trade to resume. The (immunization) gap will delay progress in getting society back to normalcy.”
Vaccine not approved by international standards, 50 million vaccinated raises questions
There are reports that China plans to vaccinate tens of millions of residents with the domestically produced New Crown vaccine without completing phase III clinical trials.
According to Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post and the U.S. Wall Street Journal, Chinese health officials planned in a conference call last week to inoculate 50 million people with the New Crown vaccine in two batches before next year’s Chinese New Year (Feb. 12), before Jan. 15 and before Feb. 5, and to “officially bring to market” the vaccine made by Sinopharm and Kexing in April next year.
A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman did not positively confirm or deny the report on Dec. 18. At a press conference held on Dec. 19 by leaders of the State Council’s joint prevention and control mechanism, officials still did not provide specific answers to several important questions of concern to the outside world, including China’s vaccine production and deployment capacity, the timetable for universal vaccination and vaccine prices.
On Dec. 15, officials in Jiangsu province informed the decision to procure Kexing Zhongwei and Sinopharm’s new Guan inactivated vaccine, which was preceded by vaccinations for special populations in Zhejiang and Sichuan. Officially, the “key populations” include workers in the imported cold chain, port quarantine, ship pilotage, fresh markets, and those who travel to medium- and high-risk countries or regions for work and study.
Chinese health officials said China approved the emergency use of the domestically produced New Crown vaccine in June, and that more than one million doses have been administered under the principle of “voluntary, informed and consent. “There have been no serious adverse reactions,” officials said.
But this “emergency use” has been questioned by many public health experts. They argue that China does not currently meet the criteria for emergency vaccine use until it has full data on the safety and effectiveness of the vaccine.
China currently has five new crown vaccines in Phase III clinical studies, but none have formally completed clinical trial analysis.
The UAE announced on the 9th of this month that it has approved the registration of the New Crown inactivated vaccine developed by China National Pharmaceutical Group in the country. The UAE Ministry of Health and Prevention said in a statement that analysis of the phase III clinical trials showed that the Chinese Sinopharm vaccine was 86 percent effective against New Coronavirus infection. And there are no serious safety concerns.
However, no details of the trial analysis have been released by the UAE and Sinopharm has been non-committal about the results.
GDC’s Chacondu has called for greater transparency in the vaccine trial data. She told Voice of America, “We need access to independent trial validation results on safety and efficacy – including peer-reviewed, regulatory submissions to multiple SRAs (stringent regulatory agencies). Unless the data is published, it’s hard to interpret. It’s difficult to judge effectiveness based on press releases alone, especially given that the GMP trial has been conducted in multiple countries.”
By “Stringent Regulatory Authorities,” Dr. Chacondu refers to a group of regulatory authorities recognized by the World Health Organization, all of which are composed of European, American and Japanese drug regulatory authorities, with the exception of those in China and the United Arab Emirates.
Jin Dongyan, a professor in the School of Biomedical Sciences at the University of Hong Kong Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine, believes that China’s emergency vaccination approach is too hasty. He told Voice of America, “China has actually gone to great lengths to establish a system of vaccine production and management that is in line with the world. But now it’s going back and using the ’emergency vaccination’ excuse to vaccinate a lot of people. I do not agree. Because there is no such need in China now.”
“Even foreign countries, including the U.S., the U.K. and the European Union, which have more serious outbreaks than China, are not taking vaccines that have not undergone completed phase III clinical testing to vaccinate widely in the population.”
Jin Dongyan said, “The UAE is not a country that enjoys a very high reputation and has a strict system for vaccine production and management around the world, and if China National’s vaccine is to be pushed globally, it should still be supported by these governing bodies in the U.S., the U.K., and the EU.”
Who will pay for the vaccine?
Many developed countries, including the United States, have decided to provide free vaccinations for their nationals against the new crown. Public health experts have called on the Chinese government to pay for its national vaccine as well, and there are similar calls from the private sector. But China has yet to make an official commitment, and some regions have even seen high fees for “emergency vaccinations.
At a Dec. 19 press conference, Chinese officials still did not elaborate on how much the Chinese population should pay for the new vaccine. Officials from China’s Health and Welfare Commission stressed that the pricing of China’s New Crown vaccine would be within “an acceptable range for the general public.
Official media said that the price for emergency vaccination of New Crown vaccine is 200 yuan per dose. However, according to Free Asia, community volunteers in Wuhan revealed that the local vaccination fee is “2,700 yuan for one shot, and three shots are required. The report said, “If you want a shot, you have to find a connection.
The New York Times reported in November that “scalpers” for the new vaccine appeared in some areas of Zhejiang, offering up to 10,000 yuan to make appointments for ordinary people who wanted to get the vaccine.
Professor Jin Dongyan of the University of Hong Kong said such chaos may be the result of corruption in the manufacturing units or poor government supervision, and is “a criminal act with Chinese characteristics.
He said, “If you keep a large susceptible population …… it (China) is now effectively a border blockade, which is economically costly, so the strategy that should be carried out from the national level is to give the majority of the population free vaccinations.”
Huang Yanzhong of the Council on Foreign Relations said, “Now, considering that the United Kingdom and the United States are basically mass vaccination, and it is provided by the government for free, this situation I think that if the government wants to encourage the people to vaccinate and face the ‘immunization gap’, it should keep the immunization rate to a relatively high level, it should take the form of the state to pay for it.”
“As for the current situation where people have to pay for their own vaccines, it may have something to do with the lack of regulation: if the state had positioned it to a class of vaccines and the state took over, then the situation would be different.” Huang Yanzhong said.
However, whether a country can reach the goal of herd immunity is closely related to the national acceptance of vaccines. Although China has seen a number of vaccine safety scandals and bribery problems in the vaccine industry over the past decade, the Chinese public’s enthusiasm for the new crown vaccine continues unabated.
In an online survey of respondents in 19 countries published in October in Nature, Chinese respondents had the highest percentage of positive responses when asked if they would receive a vaccine “proven to be safe and effective,” with 88.6 percent of respondents saying they would do so. The U.S. population had a positive response rate of 75.42 percent, while the Russian population was the least confident, with a positive response rate of 54.85 percent.
Huang Yanzhong said, “Although the so-called vaccine scandals have happened before, we know that this memory of the public is actually short-term, so it is likely that the original problem will be forgotten.”
However, he also pointed out that if unfavorable reports about Chinese vaccines, adverse reactions and other safety issues emerge during the vaccination process of the new crown vaccine, people’s willingness to receive the vaccine will be affected.
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