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China’s Global Vaccine Efforts How Well China’s Covid-19 Sho

This OpEd is based on an interview of Dr. Amesh Adalja, Senior Scholar John Hopkins University by Nadir Ali.

China developed two primary coronavirus vaccines: Sinovac and Sinopharm to counter the spread of deadly Coronavirus. However, the efficacy of these vaccines is very unclear. We don't have a good understanding of their efficacy against any version of the virus because there hasn't been a lot published on these vaccines in peer-reviewed medical journals looking at phase three clinical trial data. So, it's hard to even know what the baseline efficacy is, but Chinese vaccines are durable enough to prevent what really matters: severe disease.

China is showing a clear reluctance in sharing the data regarding efficacy of the Sinovac and Sinopharm. It is unclear if it's a deliberate attempt, but it's just the lack of transparency. It is important to mention that Chinese CDC director, Dr. Gao, has said that the Chinese vaccines are not as efficacious as other versions. China obviously have submitted some data to the World Health Organization in order to get an emergency listing. But again, this is something that we want to see in the medical peer-reviewed literature.

It seems that China is pushing its vaccine diplomacy among nations to augment its international influence. Chinese vaccine clearly has some level of efficacy, but how efficient they are is blurred. Although the efficiency is unclear but, in a situation, where we have less vaccines, available China is making strides with immunity by their global vaccine diplomacy efforts. Sometimes their global vaccine diplomacy efforts are tied to countries de-recognizing Taiwan, which is really appalling. In general, the more people are vaccinated, even if Chinese vaccines are less efficient. It is also a fact that Chinese vaccines do prevent serious illness, which is really the main thing that vaccines are designed to do.

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China is not respecting an international norm and rules-based order that respects multilateral bodies. It is very important to understand the origin of this virus and very important for countries that have outbreaks to be transparent with the world because we're not going to face just this pandemic. There are going to be future pandemics as well. The world needs to learn more about how coronavirus has jumped from animals and bats to humans. We also need to know about what lab biosafety procedures were in place at the Wuhan Institute of virology. What types of viruses were being worked on? All of that is very important to help us understand how this virus caused a worldwide pandemic.

The Chinese government's lack of transparency has made it much more difficult to find the origin. We need to have an independent, transparent investigation because this is going to inform our future pandemic preparedness efforts.

Ironically, China has decided not to allow visitors to enter the country unless they have been vaccinated with a Chinese-made vaccine. This is the very unfair and wrong way to go about it. Many of these vaccines are efficacious, not just one type of vaccine. It's meaningless for China to not accept people that have been vaccinated with AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson and Johnson’s Vaccines. A data-driven approach is necessary and the best way to end this pandemic is to start allowing vaccinated people, to get back to their pre-pandemic life, and to have data on all the vaccines to see how they're holding up against the Delta variant.

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