Top Chinese official admits vaccines have low effectiveness

The Chinese official acknowledged that current vaccines offer low protection against the novel pathogen. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDCP) is being considered to boost their effectiveness.

China uses its vaccine diplomacy and has distributed hundreds of millions of Sinovac doses of domestically made jabs to a dozen of countries, which are relying on them for its own mass inoculation campaign, SF Chronicle reports.

According to the head of China’s CDCP, Gao Fu, the vaccines’ efficacy rates needed improving due to the appearance of the new COVID-19 strains.

“We will solve the issue that current vaccines don’t have very high protection rates,” Gao confirmed in a rare acknowledgement during a presentation on the COVID-19 drugs and inoculation strategies on Saturday.

Mr Gao added it’s now under consideration whether we should use different vaccines from different technical lines for the vaccination process.