China Considers COVID-19 Vaccine Combination

Ilustrasi vaksin COVID-19. (Wikimedia Commons/Ministry of Defense of Peru)

JAKARTA - China's disease control officials have officially announced that the Bamboo Curtain Country is considering a combination of THE COVID-19 vaccine, to improve the efficacy of the vaccine.

Available data shows China's vaccine lags behind others, including Pfizer and Moderna in terms of efficacy, but requires less temperature control during storage.

"The vaccines available today do not have a very high level of protection", Director of China's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Gao Fu told Reuters Monday, April 12.

"Inoculation using vaccines from different technical pathways is being considered", he continued.

Gao further explained that taking steps to 'optimize' the vaccine process, including changing the number of doses and the length of time between doses, is a 'definite' solution to the efficacy problem.

China itself is known to have developed four types of domestic vaccines approved for public use. A local official said on Saturday the country would likely produce 3 billion doses by the end of the year.

The COVID-19 vaccine developed by Sinovac China was found to have an efficacy rate slightly above 50 percent in Brazilian clinical trials. A separate study in Turkey said the vaccine was effective at 83.5 percent.

No detailed efficacy data has been released on vaccines made by Sinopharm China. It said the two vaccines developed by its unit had an effectiveness of 79.4 percent and 72.5 percent respectively based on interim results. By comparison, Pfizer vaccines have up to 97 percent efficacy.

Both vaccine makers have presented data on their COVID-19 vaccines that show efficacy levels as required by the World Health Organization (WHO), the WHO panel said in March.

China is known to send millions of vaccines abroad. Chinese authorities are vigorously fighting for their alert vaccines while questioning the safety and logistical capabilities of other COVID-19 vaccines.

"Global vaccine protection level test data is both high and low", Gao told the state media's Global Times on Sunday.

"How to increase the level of vaccine protection is a problem that needs to be considered by global scientists", Gao added, adding that mixing vaccines and adjusting immunization methods is the solution he proposes.