Director George Fu Gao of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention said the Chinese-made vaccines "don't have very high protection rates."
"We will solve the issue that current vaccines don't have very high protection rates," said Gao during a presentation on the Chinese vaccines and immunization strategies at a medical conference in China. "It's now under consideration whether we should use different vaccines from different technical lines for the immunization process."
Gao did not clarify how exactly Chinese researchers will mix the different vaccines, but he did say that the Chinese CDC was taking steps to "optimize" the vaccines. This includes mixing different vaccines, changing the number of doses and changing the time between shots.
China currently has three vaccines that are widely used around the world. These were made by the private Sinovac Biotech and the state-owned Sinopharm.
Sinovac's phase III trial in Brazil reported an efficacy rate of 49.1 percent. Sinopharm's trial in Peru reported an efficacy rate of 33.3 percent for its Wuhan-made vaccine and 11.5 percent for the one made in Beijing. (Related: China says people who take Sinopharm vaccine now need a THIRD DOSE to boost its effectiveness.)
Those phase III trials are below the 50 percent threshold set by the World Health Organization for a coronavirus vaccine to be considered suitably effective.
Vaccines made by Sinovac and Sinopharm have made up the majority of Chinese vaccines distributed to dozens of nations including Turkey, Mexico, Indonesia, Hungary and Brazil.
Gao immediately walks back comments regarding efficacy of Chinese coronavirus vaccines
In a message to the Associated Press, Gao immediately denied admitting that the Chinese vaccines were not effective. According to him, he was talking about the effectiveness of "vaccines in the world, not particularly for China."
He refused to respond to further questions regarding which vaccines, in particular, he was referring to. Instead, Gao redirected journalists to an interview he did on Sunday, April 11, with state-owned tabloid Global Times. During this interview, Gao said his admission was "a complete misunderstanding."
"The protection rates of all vaccines in the world are sometimes high, and sometimes low," said Gao. "How to improve their efficacy is a question that needs to be considered by scientists around the world."
But Gao's initial comments regarding the effectiveness of China's coronavirus vaccines might cause concern in the many countries that rely on the jabs manufactured in the communist nation.
The situation was made even worse by the fact that Gao admitted in March that two doses of Chinese-made vaccine may not be enough and a third dose may be required to prevent severe infections. "The antibodies in the body [produced after taking the vaccines] may not be so good for preventing respiratory infections," said Gao during an interview with state-owned media outlet CCTV.
Even Chinese citizens are becoming wary of the Chinese vaccines, especially since Hong Kong authorities announced that at least 12 people have died after receiving a Sinovac vaccine. These same authorities were quick to deny any connection between the vaccine and the causes of death.
There may even be evidence that Chinese authorities are attempting to lessen the number of people who could die after receiving its vaccines by preventing a lot of people from taking them.
Zhou Na, a resident of the city of Qingdao in eastern China, told The Epoch Times during a phone interview that she knows at least one person who died after getting vaccinated.
"The doctor [that took care of him] said he had chronic diseases and didn't read the vaccine's manual carefully," said Zhou. "The hospital said that the death isn't a medical malpractice, and refused to pay any compensation to the family."
Zhou admitted that before getting vaccinated she was forced to sign a multi-page document that listed the different kinds of people who cannot be vaccinated. "The document is very long," she said. "We thought we were healthy. We just signed the paper [without reading] and got the shot."
Learn more about the many different coronavirus vaccines made around the world, including those made by China, by reading the latest articles at Vaccines.news.
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