Sinovac found to be highly effective; Covid vaccines exceeding expectations

First word

THERE’s plenty of good news from the front in the war against Covid-19. The war effort may have turned a corner. Vaccines, including China’s Sinovac, are in position now to beat Covid-19. From here on, fearmongers will have nothing to feed on.

First, Bloomberg News reported on May 12, that in a real-world study, China’s Sinovac vaccine has proven highly effective and safe. The vaccine is wiping out Covid-19 among health workers in Indonesia. The finding dispels the earlier doubts about Sinovac during the testing phase.

Second, another report, this one from businessinsider.com, says coronavirus vaccines are exceeding expectations in the real world — even in the face of variants.

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Coronavirus vaccines are proving just as effective in real life as they were in clinical trials.

This news is especially significant for the Philippines. For a long time, there was much vaccine hesitancy in the country because all the government could roll out was Sinovac vaccines in its vaccination program.

Now the country is getting deliveries of all the major vaccines against Covid-19 — PfizerBioNTech, Moderna, AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson and Sputnik V.

Indonesia study finds Sinovac highly effective

Bloomberg’s report on the Sinovac vaccine turnaround was detailed and convincing. It said:

“Sinovac Biotech Ltd.’s vaccine is wiping out Covid-19 among health workers in Indonesia, an encouraging sign for the dozens of developing countries reliant on the controversial Chinese shot, which performed far worse than Western vaccines in clinical trials.

“Indonesia tracked 25,374 health workers in Jakarta for 28 days after they received their second dose and found that the vaccine protected 100 percent of them from death and 96 percent from hospitalization as soon as seven days after, said Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin in an interview on Tuesday. The workers were tracked until late February.

“Sadikin also said that 94 percent of the workers had been protected against infection — an extraordinary result that goes beyond what was measured in the shot’s numerous clinical trials — though it’s unclear if the workers were uniformly screened to detect asymptomatic carriers.

“‘We see a very, very drastic drop,’ in hospitalizations and deaths among medical workers, Sadikin said. It’s not known what strain of the coronavirus

Sinovac’s shot worked against in Indonesia, but the country has not flagged any major outbreaks driven by variants of concern.

“The data adds to signs out of Brazil that the Sinovac shot is more effective than it proved in the testing phase, which was beset by divergent efficacy rates and questions over data transparency. Results from its biggest phase 3 trial in Brazil put the shot known as CoronaVac’s efficacy at just above 50 percent, the lowest among all first-generation Covid vaccines.

“A spokesman for Sinovac in Beijing said the company cannot comment on the Indonesian study until it acquires more details.

“In a separate interview with Bloomberg Tuesday, Sinovac’s chief executive officer Yin Weidong defended the disparity in clinical data around the shot and said there was growing evidence CoronaVac is performing better when applied in the real world.

“But the real-world examples also show that the Sinovac shot’s ability to quell outbreaks requires the vast majority of people to be vaccinated, a scenario that developing countries with poor health infrastructure and limited access to shots cannot reach quickly. In the Indonesian health worker study, and another in a Brazilian town of 45,000 people called Serrana, nearly 100 percent of people studied were fully vaccinated, with serious illness and deaths dropping after they were inoculated.

“The vaccine’s protection is likely to vary from place to place due to virus variants, but Sinovac’s shot appears to be holding up well against the new mutations of concern, he said.

“‘The results from real world application and the scientific data we have from clinical trials will allow the world to judge our vaccine comprehensively,’ said Yin. ‘We encourage our partners and governments in countries where our vaccine is being used to release such data as soon as possible.’

“Indonesia was one of the earliest countries to place its bet on a Chinese vaccine. In January, President Joko Widodo became the first major world leader to receive the Sinovac shot in a bid to quell skepticism at home and abroad. Since then, Southeast Asia’s largest economy has administered more than 22 million doses, mostly Sinovac, as it seeks to reach herd immunity for its 270-million strong population by yearend.

“‘The minimum efficacy rate should be above 50 percent, so beyond that, the best vaccine is the one you can get as soon as possible, as every shot given can prevent deaths,’ Health Minister Sadikin said. ‘It isn’t only about getting the highest efficacy rate, but inoculating people quickly.’ …

“Helen Petousis-Harris, a vaccinologist at the University of Auckland, said that the ability of vaccines to control a disease can be higher in the real world than when measured in clinical trials.

“‘In my experience, we often fail to predict the overall impact of vaccines, something that can only be seen in the real world after widespread use,’ she said. ‘Reducing the bulk of disease is not only essential to save lives but also to reduce the chances of problematic variants appearing.’”

Covid vaccines exceed expectations

Business Insider delivered an even more positive report on Covid vaccines as a whole.

The difference between a clinical trial and a real-world study is the difference between clinic testing and real-life conditions.

Coronavirus vaccines are proving just as effective in real life as they were in clinical trials.

That indicates that the vaccines are holding up well against the dreaded variants.

In Pfizer’s case, the shot also seems to yield fewer side effects than in clinical trials.

By the time coronavirus vaccines were rolled out to the public, tens of thousands of people had already received their shots in clinical trials.

The results of those studies gave a good sense of how well the vaccines worked: Pfizer’s was found to reduce the risk of getting Covid-19 by 95 percent, while Moderna’s had an efficacy of 94.5 percent. Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose shot, meanwhile, was found to cut the risk of infection by 66 percent globally — and by 72 percent among US trial participants.

But the three trials were difficult to compare side by side since they happened at different stages in the pandemic and in different geographic regions.

Now, real-world studies are beginning to offer a clearer picture of how well the vaccines perform outside trials and in the face of emerging variants.

For the most part, it’s great news: Pfizer and Moderna’s vaccines seem to be just as effective in real life as in their trials. Recent studies have also found that both shots prevent asymptomatic infections, a result that wasn’t yet known when the trial data came out.

Vaccines are holding up well against variants. As coronavirus variants began to circulate widely in December last year, some scientists worried that Pfizer’s or Moderna’s shots would stop performing as well as they did in the summer and fall.

But a large study of Pfizer recipients in Israel suggests that new variants haven’t diminished the vaccine’s effectiveness. Pfizer’s vaccine was found to be at least 97 percent effective against symptomatic Covid-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths.