China may mix different vaccines to ‘optimise’ them

CHINA’S top disease control official said the country is formally considering mixing Covid-19 vaccines, as a way of further boosting inoculation efficacy.

Available data shows Chinese vaccines lag behind others, including Pfizer and Moderna, in terms of efficacy, but they do require less stringent temperature controls during storage.

The vaccines currently available “don’t have very high rates of protection”, Gao Fu, the director of the Chinese Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, told a weekend news conference in the city of Chengdu. “Inoculation using vaccines of different technical lines is being considered,” he said.

Mr Gao said that taking steps to “optimise” the vaccine process, including changing the number of doses and the length of time between doses, was a “definite” solution to the efficacy issues.

China has developed four domestic vaccines approved for public use and an official said on Saturday that the country will likely produce three billion doses by the end of the year.

A Covid-19 vaccine developed by China’s Sinovac had an efficacy rate of slightly above 50 per cent in Brazilian clinical trials. A separate study in Turkey said it was 83.5 per cent effective.

No detailed efficacy data has been released on vaccines made by China’s Sinopharm. It has said two vaccines developed by its units are 79.4 per cent and 72.5 per cent effective respectively, based on interim results.