China is in the throes of a raging coronavirus outbreak as caseloads surge at an unprecedented rate, ominously overwhelming its healthcare facilities, straining its medical staff, and causing panic among the pandemic-weary population that witnessed differing levels of COVID-19 restrictions from the past three years.
The dangerous surge comes at a time when the CCP, uncharacteristic of its nature, heeded the public outcry over stifling zero-covid policy and relaxed restrictions to ward off anger and resentment brewing among the populace.
But no sooner did China relax restrictions than the country confronted itself with the daunting task of containing the surge of COVID-19 cases that climbed precipitously in the last few days. Therefore, the current spike in infection is striking, given that China was among the first nations to aggressively vaccinate its population against the pandemic that had wreaked havoc across the globe and caused upwards of 6 million deaths.
The BBC quoted epidemiologist Wu Zunyou as saying that this may be the beginning of a ‘first wave’. He has predicted that the second wave will be in late January when mass travel due to the Chinese New Year celebrations will spread infection. The Third wave is likely to hit from late February to mid-March as millions of people return after the holidays, as per Zunyou.
How studies raised concerns over the ineffectiveness of Chinese-made vaccines
The inexorable rise of COVID-19 cases in China has raised questions on the efficacy of the vaccines administered by Beijing to its population, vindicating concerns and studies that raised alarms over the effectiveness of the homemade vaccines it used to vaccinate its population of more than 1 billion.
Earlier this year, a Singapore research studied the likelihood of people jabbed with China’s Sinovac vaccine developing severe symptoms of COVID-19 vis-a-vis those administered with Pfizer/Moderna mRNA vaccines.
The study, which covered 2.7 million who received 2 doses of the vaccine, observed lower relative effectiveness of the two inactivated whole virus vaccines – Sinovac and Sinopharm – against COVID-19 infection compared to the mRNA vaccines – Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna.
Those who received the Sinovac vaccine were 4.59 times more likely to develop severe COVID-19 compared to those who received the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. They were also 2.37 times more likely to be infected, compared to those who took the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, the study concluded, heightening fears that the Chinese-made vaccines may not be effective against Omicron, the more virulent strain of coronavirus.
In early December this year, a report published in The Singapore Post said that Chinese-made vaccines have raised the spectre of pushing the world into the grips of coronavirus yet again. It highlighted how many in the developing world had leaned on China for their vaccine requirements and how the reports of low efficacy of China’s Sinovac and Sinopharm may push the world into another bout of coronavirus pandemic.
Another study measuring the effectiveness of China’s vaccines against Indian-made coronavirus vaccines earlier this year concluded that the former had been less than desirable efficacious levels needed to blunt the impact of the pandemic. The study found that the effectiveness of Indian vaccines was 99.30 per cent in fully vaccinated people, while the potency of Chinese vaccines could not go beyond 79 per cent.
Besides, a study published in the Lancet Infectious Disease journal showed that Chinese vaccines were unable to detect omicron-sub variants, reported Asian Lite International.
Countries that had jabbed their populations with Chinese vaccines scrambled for booster shots of other vaccines to ward off COVID outbreak
In 2021 too, questions were raised over the efficacy of the coronavirus vaccines manufactured by China. Egypt, Turkey, Indonesia, UAE, and Bahrain scrambled to provide their populations with more effective vaccines after they witnessed a surge in the coronavirus cases despite vaccinating their people with Chinese vaccines.
Another research conducted in 2021 discovered that Chinese vaccines had a lower efficacious rate and offered a limited period of protection. In a group administered with Coronavac, only 30% of them were found to be effective at preventing severe disease and 45% effective against death, compared with 67% and 85%, respectively, for the Oxford–AstraZeneca jab.
Will China swallow its pride and import more effective vaccines from India and the West?
Despite efficacy flags raised by research organisations, the CCP government in China refused to heed their warnings and continued jabbing its population with the Chinese-made COVID-19 vaccines. The authoritarian government in Beijing had inexplicably linked the persistence of continuing with homemade vaccines to their premier Xi Jinping’s pride, refusing to import more effective vaccines from neighbouring India and archrival US, considering it an insult to its ability to protect its population with domestic vaccines.
As Beijing stares at a mountain of coronavirus cases in days to come, it may have to swallow its pride and order vaccines from elsewhere to tame the pandemic and alleviate the misery of its population. It will be interesting to see if CCP can once prioritise saving the lives of its people over being obsessed with projecting its supremacy.
