[The announcement by the United
Arab Emirates that it approved a Chinese vaccine was met with silence from
China, and raised more questions.]
By Sui-Lee Wee
The announcement by the Emirates’
Ministry of Health and Prevention was the first official indicator of a Chinese
vaccine’s potential to help stop the pandemic. If results from elsewhere show
similar findings, the Chinese vaccines could
offer a lifeline to developing countries that cannot afford vaccines
from the United States that are likely to be more expensive and more difficult
to transport.
But Chinese officials and
Sinopharm, the state-owned maker of the vaccine, were silent on Wednesday on
the Emirati disclosures. And scientists noted that the announcement was lacking
in data and other critical details.
The news that a Chinese vaccine is
86 percent effective — exceeding the 50 percent threshold set by many
governments — is a boost to China’s biomedical ambitions. But it falls short of
the performance reported by the American drug makers Pfizer and Moderna,
which said earlier that their vaccines were more than 90 percent effective at
protecting against the coronavirus.
The Emirates, which is among 10
countries where Sinopharm is testing its two vaccines, said it
had reviewed an interim analysis of data from late-stage clinical trials by
Sinopharm that also showed the vaccine was 100 percent effective in
preventing moderate and severe cases of the disease. There were no serious
safety concerns, it said.
“The announcement is a significant
vote of confidence by the U.A.E.’s health authorities in the safety and
efficacy of this vaccine,” the ministry said in a release carried by the
state-run Emirates News Agency. The government did not say whether it had
conducted an independent analysis of the raw data.
The data from the Emirates bodes
well for Sinopharm’s vaccines to obtain full regulatory approval in China,
which Sinopharm
sought even before the completion of final trials. The company is also
conducting trials in Bahrain, Jordan, Peru, Argentina and elsewhere.
“I think it could hit the market in
China very soon, and there will be news within the next one to two weeks,” said
Tao Lina, a vaccine expert in China and a former immunologist at the Shanghai
Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
The vaccine could also help bring
China closer to fulfilling a pledge by China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, to make
the vaccine a “global public good.”
But even as the announcement by the
Emirates raised hopes about the promise of Chinese vaccines, it also pointed to
a frustrating
lack of clarity that has dogged China’s coronavirus vaccine
development for months.
Sinopharm would not confirm or
comment on the Emirates news even hours after it came out. A spokeswoman for
the company hung up the phone when reached and did not respond to messages and
calls afterward.
The news release from the Emirati
government provided few other key details, such as the number of Covid-19 cases
that were analyzed or the ages of the volunteers, making it unclear to
scientists how Sinopharm came to its conclusions.
“The devil is in the details,” said
Beate Kampmann, director of the Vaccine Center at the London School
of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. “It’s very difficult to judge
this without seeing the number of cases. The main thing is, the trial results
need to be made public.”
Jin Dongyan, a virologist at the
University of Hong Kong, called the information in the Emirates’ disclosure
“mediocre,” saying more transparency from the vaccine maker was needed.
“If they make everything secretly,
like a black box, that does not help,” Professor Jin said. “That would just
create confusion and mistrust and could be counterproductive.”
The need for clarity on the safety
and efficacy of China’s vaccines has taken on more urgency after Sinopharm
revealed it had already vaccinated roughly a million people even before the
completion of clinical trials. The campaign has alarmed
overseas scientists who say it exposes people to undue risks.
Chinese officials have repeatedly
assured the public that the country’s coronavirus vaccines are safe, while
providing few details. Last month, Liu Jingzhen, the chairman of Sinopharm,
said no one among the people who had received the company’s vaccines had
experienced any adverse reactions. He said that “only a few had mild symptoms.”
In October, Zheng Zhongwei, a
senior health official, said the government had established a “follow-up
program” to track the people who had been vaccinated, though he gave no
details.
Sinovac Biotech, a Beijing-based
private vaccine maker, has already begun exporting its vaccines to countries
like Indonesia and Brazil. Sinopharm, which has another vaccine in late-stage
testing, has said it is preparing to deliver 500 million doses worldwide,
according to the state-run newspaper Science and Technology Daily.
It is unclear whether the Emirates
will start using the Chinese vaccine — which Sinopharm developed with the
Beijing Institute of Biological Products — for mass inoculations. The
government had already approved the vaccine for emergency use in September for
frontline workers at risk of contracting Covid-19.
Some other countries where
Sinopharm is conducting trials are counting on Chinese vaccines to help protect
their populations. Morocco says it is preparing to vaccinate 80 percent of its
adults, relying initially on a Sinopharm vaccine, though it would wait for
China to approve the vaccine, according to Médias24, a Moroccan news website.
The Chinese vaccines are also
appealing to developing countries because they could be easier to distribute.
Sinopharm has said its vaccines need be refrigerated at temperatures of only 2
to 8 degrees Celsius (or 35 to 46 degrees Fahrenheit) and could remain stable
for up to three years. In contrast, Pfizer and Moderna’s vaccines, which are
made with genetic materials that fall apart when
they thaw, require industrial freezers, making transportation and storage
more challenging.
Sinopharm’s vaccines are both made
from coronaviruses that have been killed or weakened, a technique that has been
used for decades in the influenza and polio vaccines, for example. By
comparison, Moderna’s and Pfizer’s vaccines use a technology that has never
before been approved for widespread use.
Another advantage of the inactivated
vaccines being developed by Sinopharm is that they tend to have fewer adverse
effects after immunization, according to Florian Krammer, an immunologist at
the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York. He said more clarity
on the trials in the Emirates would be welcome, but expressed confidence in the
vaccine’s initial results.
“It would be great to see some of
that data,” Professor Krammer said in an email. “But 86 percent is a
respectable number — there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. I would take
such a vaccine.”
Aida Alami and Elsie Chen
contributed reporting.
