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Indonesia satisfied with effectiveness of Chinese vaccine
CGTN

Indonesia's government says it is satisfied with the effectiveness of the Chinese coronavirus vaccine it has been using.

Siti Nadia Tarmizi, a spokesperson for Indonesia's COVID-19 vaccine program, said Monday that the World Health Organization had found the Chinese vaccines had met requirements by being more than 50 percent effective. She noted that clinical trials in Indonesia for the vaccine from Chinese drugmaker Sinovac showed it was 65 percent effective.

"It means ... the ability to form antibodies in our bodies is still very good," she said.

Researchers who conducted Sinovac's clinical trials in Brazil released new data Monday that confirmed the company's previously announced efficacy rate of about 50 percent. The paper, which was published on a website for scientists and has not yet been peer reviewed, showed that the vaccine was 50.7 percent effective against symptomatic COVID-19 cases and much stronger against severe ones.

China has distributed hundreds of millions of doses of domestically made vaccines abroad and is relying on them for its own mass immunization campaign.

Experts say mixing vaccines, or sequential immunization, might boost effectiveness. Researchers in Britain are studying a possible combination of the Pfizer and the AstraZeneca vaccines.

"We are going to wait, waiting for the clinical trial to ensure the idea or innovation will have better effectiveness, immunogenicity, and efficacy level compared to the current condition," she said.

China currently has five vaccines in use in its mass immunization campaign, three inactivated-virus vaccines from Sinovac and Sinopharm, a one-shot vaccine from CanSino, and the last from a team led by Gao Fu, head of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, in partnership with Anhui Zhifei Longcom.

The effectiveness of the vaccines ranges from just over 50 to 79 percent, based on what the companies have said.

As of April 2, some 34 million people in China have received the full two doses of Chinese vaccines and about 65 million received one, according to Gao.

China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Monday said that Beijing will continue to provide COVID-19 vaccines urgently needed by developing countries.

"China has provided anti-pandemic material assistance to more than 160 countries and international organizations," Wang said at a conference to promote the image of the central city of Wuhan, where the virus was first detected in late 2019.

(Cover photo via CFP)

Source(s): AP

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