Shanghai Officials Support "Imported New Crown Vaccines" Experts Call for Filling China's Epidemic Prevention Loopholes

China's new crown epidemic continues to heat up, and Shanghai, the hardest hit area, issued an official document on March 29 saying "support for the import of new crown virus vaccines". Experts from the National Health Commission also publicly admitted that nucleic acid vaccines are more effective than inactivated vaccines made in China. Experts have analyzed that the turn of China's vaccine policy may mean  the exploration of the path of "coexisting with the virus", or it may be that the mutant virus is exposing the weakness of China's epidemic prevention.

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More than 50 million elderly people in China have not been fully vaccinated against the new crown

Experts from the National Health Commission admit: nucleic acid vaccines are more effective

Shanghai is currently the hardest hit area by the new crown epidemic in China. On March 29 , the municipal government issued "Several Policies and Measures for Shanghai to Fully Fight the Epidemic to Help Enterprises Promote Development", which mentioned "supporting the import of new crown vaccines", which attracted particular attention.

The official announcement reads that Shanghai "supports the import of new coronavirus vaccines and therapeutic drugs, guides and supports enterprises to participate in the construction of emergency response capabilities, and prepares backup medical resources."

Lu Hongzhou, a member of the National Health and Medical Commission's Disease Control Expert Committee , said in an interview with RTHK on the 30th that globally, the mRNA nucleic acid vaccine is the best vaccine, and he agrees to introduce it into China. He also said that a preliminary study found that after the patient took the Pfizer oral drug for 5 days, the viral load had dropped to meet the discharge criteria, indicating that the antiviral efficacy of the drug was very accurate. 

At present, China has not yet opened any mRNA nucleic acid vaccines to the market, and the new crown vaccines are mainly domestically produced inactivated vaccines from Sinopharm and Sinovac .

China's Fosun Pharma has been trying to introduce mRNA nucleic acid vaccines to China, but the approval has been delayed. After the release of the Shanghai document, the outside world speculated that Fubitai might pass the trial as soon as possible.

According to China Business News, Chen Qiyu, executive director and co-chairman of Fosun International, revealed at the performance briefing on March 24 , “The mRNA new crown vaccine Fubitai (BNT) jointly developed by Fosun Pharma and German BioNTech . The approval process for listing in mainland China is still under active communication.”

Chen Qiyu said that as of the end of February 2022 , Fubitai’s new crown vaccine has accumulated more than 20 million , and sales revenue has exceeded 500 million US dollars.

Expert: China explores the path of "coexisting with the virus"    

"If you ask me ( in the first six months of the outbreak ) , we were very serious about clearing the country and closing the border to prevent the epidemic. I agree, because at the beginning, our scientific community had limited knowledge of the virus, and strict epidemic prevention measures were necessary. Yes .  But now that the virus is spreading all over the world, it is impossible to clear it. The next question is how to coexist, which must be faced." Dr. Liang Maoshi, who used to work at AstraZeneca, told this station .

Liang Maoshi explained that at the moment when the new crown variant virus is raging, the premise of a country opening up is that the population has a good immune foundation to deal with severe illness or death caused by the new crown. And this good foundation of herd immunity is based on the vaccination rate and vaccine efficacy.

An article published in the journal Nature on March 28 points out that the low vaccination rate among the elderly in China is a major problem. Data show that about 85% of China 's population has received at least one dose of the new crown vaccine, but 52 million people over the age of 60 have not yet received the second dose. At the same time, only 20% of the most vulnerable populations (that is, those aged 80 and older) have received a booster shot of the Covid-19 vaccine.

According to the Nature article, the recent outbreak in Hong Kong is highlighting the cost of low vaccination rates among the elderly. In Hong Kong, only about one-third of the population over the age of 80 has been vaccinated against Covid-19, and 90% of deaths have not been fully vaccinated.

"The inoculation rate of the elderly in China is relatively low, probably because some domestic inactivated vaccines are undergoing Phase III clinical trials in China, and some do not include the elderly, and some only have small samples of the elderly. Therefore, the results of the Phase III clinical trials were applied. When it comes to the elderly, there are many contraindications, so some elderly people with chronic diseases cannot be vaccinated in time.” Zhang Zuofeng, director of the Department of Epidemiology at the School of Public Health at the University of California, Los Angeles, recently wrote an analysis, and he also publicly called on the Chinese government to quickly approve mRNA . Nucleic acid vaccines are used to protect the elderly and children. 

Zhang Zuofeng also called for "to use effective drugs to strengthen the treatment of patients." He suggested that Pfizer's new coronavirus treatment drug nematevir tablet / ritonavir tablet combination package Paxlovid for timely treatment of early infection, in order to reduce the mortality and mortality of the new crown.

Is inactivated vaccine a loophole in China's epidemic prevention?

According to research data released by the University of Hong Kong this month, comparing the efficacy of Sinovac and Pfizer ’s (BNT) vaccines, Sinovac’s performance is slightly worse than mRNA nucleic acid vaccine in preventing infection; From the perspective of the population, no matter what kind of vaccine, the effectiveness is about 98% . The report has not been reviewed by peer scientists.

"The data I see now is that the comprehensive antibody produced by the human body is relatively low after the inactivated vaccine is shot. This is a scientific fact." Mr. Chen, a scientist who is engaged in research on the new coronavirus in the United States and did not want to be named for safety reasons explained this. , "Whether it is an inactivated vaccine or an RNA nucleic acid vaccine, people can produce comprehensive antibodies. Antibodies are like providing bullets to the human body to fight the virus. But for example, mRNA brings a thousand bullets to the human body, and inactivated vaccines give the human body a thousand bullets. Bring 100 bullets to people. It works for the original Wuhan virus strain; but when it comes to mutants, these bullets hit the mutant virus, and the virus doesn't hurt. But when you have a thousand bullets to hit, it's the same as only One hundred can make a difference."  

 An analysis by Airfinity  , a London-based life science market analysis firm , estimated that if China does not open up the import of Western nucleic acid vaccines and provides enhanced needles to control the epidemic, once the mutant virus gets out of control in China, there may be more than one million people in the mutant virus Mystery. Died from the spread of Omicron .