China is expected to be mixing Covid-19 vaccines as a way of further boost vaccine efficacy, said China’s top official disease control official.
According to the official, China is considering to mix coronavirus vaccines in order to boost vaccine efficacy. The available data reveals that Chinese vaccines lag behind others, including Pfizer and Moderna in terms of effectiveness, but require less stringent temperature controls during storage.
Gao Fu, the director of the Chinese Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said on Saturday that giving people doses of different vaccines is one way to improve vaccines that “don’t have very high rates of protection”, he didn’t specify whether he was referring to foreign or domestic vaccines.
“Inoculation using vaccines of different technical lines is being considered,” Gao told a conference in the Chinese city of Chengdu.
Gao further said that taking steps to “optimize” the vaccine procedure, including changing the number of dosages and the length of time between dosages was a “definite” solution to effectiveness issues.
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As per the paper published by Brazilian researchers on Sunday ahead of peer review, two injections of a vaccine developed by China’s Sinovac Biotech, when given shorter than 3 weeks apart, was 49.1% effective based on data from a Phase III trial in Brazil, below the 50% threshold set by World Health Organization.
However, Gao told state tabloid Global Times on Sunday, “The global vaccine protection rate test data are both high and low,”
“How to improve the protection rate of vaccines is a problem that requires global scientists to consider,” Gao said, adding that mixing vaccines and adjusting immunization methods are solutions that he had proposed.
Gao also rejected claims by some media reports that he said Chinese Covid-19 vaccines have a low protection rate, telling Global Times that it was “a complete misunderstanding.”
