Chinese COVID vaccine: a safe “low hanging fruit” for world vaccination?

Suffering from a devastating second wave of Covid, India has reported over 400,000 cases a day, reaching a global high record on May 1, and passed the milestone of 20 million total reported cases after three days.

Having the world's largest vaccine-manufacturing capacity, however, the South Asia country also exported vaccines to a few countries but stopped when it fell into a shortage of vaccines, experiencing a record surge of new cases and the ban on vaccine material exports from the U.S. government.

While the India variant brings doubt on the protection of the existing vaccine, China's Sinovac vaccine, CoronaVac, has proved to be 50.4% effective against the prevalent variants in Brazil according to Sao Paulo's state-owned Butantan Institute. For the same vaccine, Chile's Ministry of Health announced 67% effective on April 16, based on a real-world study involving over 10 million people in Chile. Additionally, Turkish researchers said it was 91.25% effective and Indonesia announced 65.3%.

Concern that Chinese vaccine trials are not subject to the same levels of scrutiny and transparency as its Western counterparts was beaten when Sinovac published phase III data. In the long term, many vaccines against Covid are needed and, inevitably, some will perform better than others - but giving as many people as possible protection is the priority.

Globally, the vaccination inequality is shocking. Countries with the highest incomes are getting vaccinated about 25 times faster than those with the lowest, Bloomberg’s Vaccine Tracker shows . While many countries were busy securing limited procurement quota, China has repeatedly stated that it would make its vaccine a global public good, and it has poured massive efforts in fulfilling its promise. To date, China has provided vaccines to four geographical regions, covering a total of 84 countries around the world.

Deliveries by Geographical Region (in millions) Chart: Bridge Consulting

Out of the four regions, Asia Pacific has received the greatest number of Chinese vaccines, with 31 countries receiving sales and donations. Latin America received the second greatest number of Chinese vaccines.

In support of the vaccine deliveries, Cainiao, the logistics arm of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group, partnered with Ethiopian Airlines have established China’s first regular cross-border medical cold chain route to distribute Covid-19 vaccines to parts of Africa, the Middle East and Latin American. Based on the 2-8°C storage temperature of Chinese vaccine, Cainiao developed temperature-controlled boxes that guarantees up to 9 days of 5°C insulation.

Though the quantity of vaccines sold by China (689M) is over 40 times that of its donations (16.5M), China remains one of the very few available bilateral exporters while the U.S. and European countries prioritize domestic vaccination.

Data shows that 27 member states of the EU together with five other rich countries have pre-ordered about half of global vaccine, while they account for 13% of the global population. Counting up all vaccine deals per capita, Canada leads the pack, with nearly nine doses per person while China accounts less than 0.5 doses per person.

On April 26, the U.S. finally announced to share extra 60 million doses of AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine to the world. This batch of vaccines was secured far more than it needed when the world was short of supply, causing blame globally.

Misinformation: turning “help” to “trap”

Misinformation has become huge threat while the virus spread globally. A charismatic anti-vaccination campaigner, Biswaroop Roy Chowdhury, became a social media star by falsely claiming he can cure COVID-19 through diet alone. A million followers on his YouTube channel reflects the widely-spread “ vaccine hesitancy ” in the public.

Transported globally since the autumn last year under tight geopolitics conflicts, Chinese vaccine, consequently faced various of doubts on safety and efficiency, also abuses led by rumors and politician intel, turning the “help” from China to a “trap”.

The blame on China and its vaccine has boomed since the President of the Philippines Rodrigo Duterte publicly defended his military security who got vaccine from China before the government authorized it officially.

In January, an investigative story published by the Washington Post, quoted a Filipino-Chinese civic leader that at least 100,000 Chinese, mainly working in online gambling operations in Manila, had received the illegal vaccine from China. Vaccines that the Chinese community administered were Pfizer vaccines shipped from China, an online casino worker added, though the Pfizer vaccine hasn’t been approved by China yet. The information above mainly cited from gambling industry worker chat groups, lacking credibility.

The Taiwan media, Liberty Times Net, also misled that 47 Chinese workers were tested positive for Covid in Uganda despite receiving Chinese vaccine, raising questions about the efficacy of the China-made products. However, the allegation was soon slammed with facts that those workers who work for a ship factory contracted by an Indian company, had been in Uganda since 2019 and had not been vaccinated.

Despite the rumor clarified, the “Taiwan News” continued to published the news, adding two more similar “updates” reporting 16 Chinese workers at China state-run firms in Angola and 300 workers in Serbia were diagnosed despite China vaccine. The news is cited from Radio Free Asia (RFA), a U.S. government-funded news agency. And RFA failed to confirm with diagnosed Chinese labors. Without reliable fact-check, the news was forwarded by media around the world, including the Merco Press from Latin America, India Narrative and Daily H u nt from India.

Heading wider authorized

According to National Health Commission of China, as of 28 April, 244 million doses have been administered in China, 55% of which were administered in April. The domestic vaccination mainly covered by the Sinopharm or Sinovac vaccine with no serious adverse effect reported.

With negative impact of western vaccines reported, vaccine from China turned to be the “last hope”. For instance, after halting the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine for its disappointing results against new variant in February, then suspending the Johnson & Johnson vaccine because of blood clots and low platelet counts, South Africa announced that it will import 10 million doses of China’s Sinopharm vaccine at the end of April.

While the BioNTech is still discussing the possibility of its COVID-19 vaccine production sites in Africa to expand the supply network around the world, Chinese companies have jointly produced vaccines in partner countries including Indonesia, Brazil, the UAE, Malaysia, Pakistan, and Turkey, said President of China, Xi Jinping during the Boao Forum for Asia Annual Conference 2021 on April 20.

“Four of the six countries mentioned by President Xi are partners of Sinovac and have co-conducted clinical phase III trials, vaccine evaluation with us. We also transferred technology with those countries”, said Weidong Yin, the CEO of Sinovac, “In the future, we will share technology with another 10 countries for collaborative vaccine research and production.” According to Yin, the Sinovac has obtained the new variant and the vaccine produced with the new strain may be ready within a month.

On May 3, China and Argentina just announced to jointly produce Sinopharm COVID vaccine. One day after, the Europe's top health regulator, European Medicines Agency (EMA) said that it has begun evaluating Sinovac CoronaVac vaccine for potential use in the European Union.

Notably, the WHO is assess ing the Sinopharm and Sinovac vaccines for the WHO Emergency Use Listing Procedure. The decision is expected to make before May 7. If so, it will be the very first vaccine from a non-western country to gain WHO approval.

"Authorizing the emergency use of the Chinese vaccine would legitimize the international marketing of the Chinese vaccine and facilitate vaccination drives in countries that have received the vaccine," the South China Morning Post quoted Huang Yanzhong, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, “the WHO's approval will also allow the WHO-led COVAX initiative to buy Chinese vaccines for distribution.”