Countries dependent on Chinese coronavirus vaccine reporting surge in cases
New Delhi : Seychelles, Mongolia, Chile and Bahrain are among some of the nations which heavily relied on the usage of Chinese coronavirus vaccine to safeguard their population. But they are now registering a huge surge in the number of new coronavirus cases, despite vaccination.
The four countries have administered at least one dose of the vaccine to a large chunk of their populations, ranging between 58.7% for Mongolia to nearly 72% for Seychelles.
Despite the fact that at least first dose of the vaccine has been administered among the population, a surge in the fresh cases have raised several doubts and questions on the vaccine.
According to a media report, some of the experts have blamed these Chinese vaccines behind the surge, they claimed that the vaccine is not effective against coronavirus disease, especially against the new variants which have mutated.
"If the vaccines are sufficiently good, we should not see this pattern," Jin Dongyan, a virologist at the University of Hong Kong, told the New York Times, which first reported about this on Tuesday.
"The Chinese have a responsibility to remedy this," he added.
According to known information, China has approved eight domestically produced coronavirus vaccines, two of them can be administered to children of age group above 3 years. Two of them are being distributed across the world. The shots developed by Chinese firms Sinovac and Sinopharm have been given the World Health Organization’s emergency use listing (EUL).
Sinovac’s CoronaVac shot has a low efficacy of 51%, and Sinopharm’s 79% against symptomatic disease. To give it a perspective, the efficacy of Pfizer and Astrazeneca vaccines were above 90% during the first phase.
Officials from the four countries, however, say there may be other reasons for this uptick in cases. A health ministry official in Mongolia told NYT that the country may have eased restrictions too quickly, adding that the Chinese vaccines likely prevented severe illness and a higher mortality rate.
