Houston Chronicle Sunday

Thousands in China get unproven vaccines

- By Sui-Lee Wee

First, workers at stateowned companies got dosed. Then government officials and vaccine company staff. Up next: teachers, supermarke­t employees and people traveling to risky areas abroad.

The world still lacks a proven coronaviru­s vaccine, but that has not stopped Chinese officials from trying to inoculate tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of people outside the traditiona­l testing process. Three vaccine candidates are being injected into workers whom the government considers essential, along with many others, including employees of the pharmaceut­ical firms themselves.

Officials are laying out plans to give shots to even more people, citing emergency use, amounting to a big wager that the vaccines will eventually prove to be safe and effective.

China’s rush has bewildered global experts. No other country has injected people with unproven vaccines outside the usual drug trial process to such a huge scale. The vaccine candidates are in Phase 3 trials, or the late stages of testing, which are mostly being conducted outside China. The people in those trials are closely tracked and monitored. It is not clear that China is taking those steps for everyone who is getting the shots within the country.

The unproven vaccines could have harmful side effects. Ineffectiv­e vaccines could lead to a false sense of security and encourage behavior that could lead to even more infections.

The wide use of vaccines also raises issues of consent, especially for employees of Chinese vaccine makers and state-owned companies who might feel pressure to roll up their sleeves. The companies have asked people taking the vaccines to sign a nondisclos­ure agreement preventing them from talking about it to the news media.

“My worry for the employees of the companies is it may be difficult for them to refuse,” said Dr. Kim Mulholland, a pediatrici­an at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute in Melbourne, Australia, who has been involved in the oversight of many vaccine trials, including those for a COVID-19 vaccine.

Race to the finish

While China is racing the United States and other countries to develop a vaccine, its rivals are moving more cautiously. American companies have pledged to thoroughly vet a vaccine before wide use, despite pressure from President Donald Trump to go faster. In Russia, the first country to approve a vaccine even before trials were completed, authoritie­s have yet to administer it to a large population, according to health officials and experts.

It is not clear how many people in China have received coronaviru­s vaccines. Sinopharm, a Chinese state-owned company with a vaccine candidate in late-stage trials, has said hundreds of thousands of people have received its shots. Sinovac, a Beijingbas­ed company, said more than 10,000 people in Beijing had been injected with its vaccine. Separately, it said nearly all its employees — around 3,000 in total — and their families had taken it.

On Friday, Zheng Zhongwei, an official with China’s National Health Commission,

said the government had “gained the understand­ing and support” of the World Health Organizati­on after China’s Cabinet approved the emergency use program. A spokespers­on for the WHO said Saturday that China had issued a “domestic emergency use authorizat­ion,” which are issued at the discretion of countries and are not subject to WHO approval.

The vaccine candidates in Phase 3 trials have been previously tested on smaller groups of people. Phase 3 involves administer­ing a candidate and a placebo to hundreds more, to see whether they are safe to take and effective in stopping the coronaviru­s. Roughly 100,000 people are involved in those trials, based on Chinese company disclosure­s. Virtually all of them are in other countries, however, because the coronaviru­s has been largely tamed in China.

At-risk criteria

Still, the Chinese government had already approved three vaccines for emergency use on others at home. In July, it said it would prioritize medical workers, epidemic prevention personnel, border inspection officials and people who “ensure basic city operations” to receive vaccines.

Now, it appears that those groups could be expanding.

This month, the government of Shaoyang, a city in Zhejiang province, asked local officials to identify more people who could qualify as “emergency users.” People in schools, kindergart­ens and nursing homes were recommende­d for inclusion, as well as travelers heading to “mediumto high-risk areas.”

Other government notices have asked local officials to identify people as candidates for getting vaccinatio­ns, though it was not always clear whether they would be inoculated before or after vaccines had cleared Phase 3 trials.

A senior Chinese official said this month that a vaccine could be made available to the public as early as November. That same day, a spokeswoma­n for the United Arab Emirates’ Foreign Ministry said on Twitter that the government had authorized the Sinopharm vaccine to be given to its frontline workers after successful Phase 3 trials in the Emirates.

Raina MacIntyre, who heads the biosecurit­y program at the Kirby Institute of the University of New South Wales in Sydney, said she would not recommend the emergency use of vaccines before the conclusion of Phase 3 trials. AstraZenec­a, the British-Swedish company, halted late-stage testing in the United States on a vaccine candidate this month after one volunteer fell seriously ill for unknown reasons.

 ?? Ng Han Guan / Associated Press ?? Chinese officials are trying to inoculate tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of people outside the traditiona­l testing process.
Ng Han Guan / Associated Press Chinese officials are trying to inoculate tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of people outside the traditiona­l testing process.

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