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Although Chinese vaccines are not officially approved as safe or effective, the country’s citizens are being mass vaccinated as a last resort. One such vaccination campaign, according to a friend of the translator, took place in the city of Iu in eastern China.
That same night, Zhang boarded the plane and flew from Beijing to Iu. I even had to wait four hours in a line at the hospital. For $ 30, Zhang was vaccinated, according to The New York Times.
The man was little moved that the liquid injected into his hand had not been fully examined. This approach is of great concern to global health professionals.
“Now that I have protection, I feel much freer,” Zhang said. “When the vaccine was introduced as a last resort, it was clear that it offered some guarantee.”
In China, efforts have been made to make unapproved drugs universally available. For a long time, a series of quality scandals have been used to convince the citizens of a country that has been skeptical about vaccines that the vaccines on offer are safe and effective. Even government officials and pharmaceutical executives proudly claim to have been vaccinated.
The vaccination campaign was much more fluid than expected: doses of 500 IU were not left for the city for several hours. In other cities, doses are limited and people are asked to provide proof of predictable travel. The huge demand for the vaccine has led to the emergence of certain types of speculators. Sending them for vaccination can cost up to 1.5 thousand. dollars (almost 1.3 thousand euros).
Those who believe in the vaccine may be at great risk: People who have been “vaccinated” with an ineffective product are probably feeling safe and are beginning to act much more freely. They can be deprived of the right to request another truly effective vaccine, explaining that they have already been vaccinated. It has been the case in the past that injecting an unapproved vaccine posed a health risk.
Potential problems are rarely discussed. The vaccine consent forms that The New York Times journalists had the opportunity to review did not indicate that the product used was still being tested.
“This type of risk is not mentioned directly,” said Yanzhong Huang, head of the Council on Foreign Relations. global health specialist and Chinese health expert.
Any reports of death or illness would undermine confidence in the vaccine. It took several years for the Chinese vaccine industry to get rid of the scandal.
“If side effects really started to happen, people would stop trusting us,” said Kristine Macartney, director of the National Center for Immunization Research and Monitoring in Sydney, Australia.
It is not clear how many people have been vaccinated with possible vaccines. Three of the four such drugs have been used to vaccinate tens of thousands of state-owned companies, government officials and business leaders since July, before the final phase of human exposure testing, Phase 3, is completed.
However, only when Phase 3 of the trial is completed, companies will send the results to the control authorities of the countries to which the vaccine will be sold. After analyzing and evaluating the results, the authorities will issue a verdict on the reliability of the products.
City officials intend to work to make current vaccines available to more people. Beijing indicated that vaccinated individuals are being registered, but did not comment further on the matter.
The situation in China is significantly different from that of the United States. After a series of polls, it became clear that many Americans would not be vaccinated against the coronavirus, which in turn would greatly complicate efforts to quell the pandemic. According to a global online survey published in the journal Nature in October, the largest group of respondents to the question of whether they would get vaccinated if offered an approved, safe and effective vaccine were Chinese respondents.
“Chinese thinking can be combined with the idea that ‘I need something that everyone gets,'” said Jennifer Huang Bouey, specialist at RAND Corporation, “so the challenges they face would be different from the potential problems in the United States.” . Apparently, the Chinese would have to decide how to avoid unrest when the vaccine is received, and not how to sell it. “
Chinese officials are trying to defend the decision to start selling potential vaccines. Zheng Zhongwei, a senior member of China’s National Health Commission, said last month that given the outbreaks abroad, such a measure was simply necessary to protect people’s health and lives. Liu Jingzhen, president of the Chinese pharmaceutical company Sinopharm, said last week that about a million people have already been vaccinated with the company’s vaccine, but he did not give an exact number.
“We have not received any reports of serious adverse reactions and only a few people have experienced some mild symptoms,” said Liu Jingzhen.
According to him, many of those immunized had gone abroad and none had recovered from the infection.
Chinese enthusiasm for the possibility of vaccination is taking on a tone of national pride.
Wang Mingtao, a 43-year-old employee of the Ghana gold mining company, posted a video on the Douyin social network (China’s TikTok version) showing people queuing at the Sinopharm headquarters in Beijing. Wang Mingtao added the title “My country is powerful” to the video.
Wang Mingtao came to Beijing from northern China. He said he had no concerns about the experimental vaccine. The vaccine, produced by Sinopharm’s Beijing Biological Products Institute, cost him $ 150 (€ 126).
The product is not always dosed as it should. September 26 Wang Mingtao received two injections, one in each arm. Anyway, it should have been 14 or 28 days between the two doses, but Wang Mingtao, as he said, was in a hurry to go on a trip and did not have time to return to Beijing.
“The country’s authorities have said that the vaccine is good, so I think it is worth getting vaccinated,” he said.
Sinopharm Chairman Liu Jingzhen said that under certain circumstances, both doses can be administered at the same time, one at a time. According to vaccine researcher Clarence Tam from the Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health at the National University of Singapore, it takes a few days between injections to generate the strongest immune response possible.
The early launch of potential vaccines has highlighted the potential problems that will be encountered when deliveries of an approved vaccine begin. The need for the vaccine is so great that it may not be easy for companies to cope with the expected volume of household and other supplies.
Wendy Zhang, a 26-year-old medical worker from Jinan, in the east of the country, said she had to wait 57 days after the first vaccination in October because preparations had finished. After the second vaccination, she immediately felt much calmer.
“There were no side effects after vaccination. This means that the vaccine made in China is really safe,” Zhang is convinced.
Eden Huang, a nineteen-year-old student who recently moved to Amsterdam, has already tried registering for the vaccine four times. He has been trying since Sinopharm announced that the vaccine was available to students. The young man also called hospitals in Zhejiang province, but did not search for anything.
“I am very concerned,” Huang admitted, “because European governments do not take COVID-19 as seriously as the Chinese government.”
Huang said his concerns were not about the safety of the vaccine. He based his confidence in the vaccine on reports that the drug had been tested in 60,000 patients. people involved in the studies.
“This vaccine will do more harm than good,” Huang said.
Those who do not register can always turn to speculators. For a fee that ranges between 600 and 1.5 thousand. dollars (504-1.26 thousand euros), said appraiser can organize the shipment of the vaccine.
Many people talk slowly about how they managed to sign up for the vaccine. The person who handled the shipments, who refused to give his full name for fear of being sanctioned, said he was collaborating with companies and registering people through them in a private company, Sinovac, which has a vaccine that is in the final stages of investigation.
“Some people have been especially grateful for my help,” said a person who introduced himself to Mr. Li, who suspected he might be behaving illegally.
Others avoided answering the question of how they cared for the vaccine.
In Chaosing, a city that just had a chance to walk, taxi driver He Meili said that she and other company employees had been offered a vaccine for $ 120 (101 euros).
“I’d like to wait. I’m still a bit worried,” He Meili admitted.
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