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China is in the midst of its first major COVID surge, and it’s one of the world’s largest.
China rolled back COVID restrictions in early December, and now scientists estimate that the country could be facing more than 10 million new cases each day. Over the next several months, several hundred thousand people could die, perhaps more, several teams predict.
There’s also concern that widespread COVID in China could lead to new variants, but variants can emerge anywhere in the world right now as COVID continues to circulate.
The actual death toll – and the total impact of this surge – depends largely on one key factor: How well China’s vaccines work.
The two main shots deployed in the country are CoronaVac and Sinopharm, both developed and manufactured in China.
About 90% of the population has received at least two doses of one of these vaccines.
Rumors and misinformation run rampant about COVID vaccines no matter where they’re manufactured. But, as NPR has reported, such myths and misconceptions are especially problematic for vaccines made in China. Issues with past vaccines have made segments of the population leery about the made-in-China COVID vaccines. But the misinformation about these vaccines doesn’t arise only from inside China or on social media, says global health researcher Xi Chen at Yale University.
„The American media has shared a lot of misinformation about the Chinese vaccines,“ Chen says. „I read both Chinese and English media stories, and I see some news stories, like from Fox News and others, translated into Chinese.“ New stories in the U.S. have even questioned the efficacy of these vaccines, despite the fact that both have been approved by the World Health Organization.
Given that more than 700 million people will likely catch COVID in China over the next few months, we thought it would be a good time to dig deep into the science of the Chinese vaccines and analyze what the data show, especially when it comes to two major aspects of the vaccines: efficacy and safety.
Rumor #1: I’ve heard the Chinese vaccines don’t work very well? Is that true?
„No, that’s not true,“ says epidemiologist Ben Cowling at the University of Hong Kong. „Our research in Hong Kong has shown that’s not true. I don’t have a concern about the effectiveness of the Chinese vaccine.“
The Chinese vaccines are not „mRNA vaccines,“ like the ones Pfizer and Moderna manufacture.
