China's Sinovac COVID-19 Vaccine

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China's Sinovac COVID-19 Vaccine Mar 12, 2021 4:40:18 GMT

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Post by Admin on Mar 12, 2021 4:40:18 GMT

The International Olympic Committee will purchase coronavirus vaccines from China for all Olympic and Paralympic competitors ahead of this summer’s Tokyo Games and next year’s Beijing Winter Games, the organization's president announced Thursday.

Why it matters: The move aims to reassure the public that this summer's Games will not result in a super-spreader event. Polling in Japan is strongly leaning against holding this year's Olympics.

It also "amounts to a public relations coup for China and a solution to a problem" for the IOC, the New York Times writes.

Details: The Olympic committee will cover the costs for any Olympic and Paralympic competitors who still needs the inoculation. Existing international agencies will take care of the distribution.

China will also provide two vaccines for the general population in each athlete’s home country for each one given to an Olympics participant.

The IOC did not offer specifics about the number of vaccine doses purchased or potential costs, but noted that 270 world championships and world cups have taken place since September 2020, involving more than 30,000 athletes.

"[E]ven without vaccinations being widely available, not one of these events had turned into a virus-spreader, providing proof that international sports events with a large number of international participants can be organised while safeguarding the health of everyone," IOC President Thomas Bach said in Thursday's statement.

"Thursday’s announcement ... will help the I.O.C. resolve a sensitive matter that has been one of the many questions hanging over the Tokyo Games: how to ensure that thousands of visitors to Japan from around the world will be vaccinated when they arrive, and how to do so without making it look as if fit, young, elite athletes and their teams have jumped the line while the global death toll from the coronavirus continues to grow," the NYT reports.

Last Edit: Mar 12, 2021 4:40:48 GMT by Admin

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China's Sinovac COVID-19 Vaccine Mar 12, 2021 20:15:38 GMT

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Post by Admin on Mar 12, 2021 20:15:38 GMT

The Japanese government has decided to exclude overseas spectators from attending this summer's Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics, as part of efforts to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus, officials with knowledge of the matter said Tuesday.

The government and the Japanese organizing committee of the Summer Games are expected to hold a remote meeting with the International Olympic Committee and two other bodies possibly next week to make a formal decision on the issue of overseas visitors.

The government has concluded that welcoming fans from abroad is not possible given concerns among the Japanese public over the coronavirus and the fact that more contagious variants have been detected in many countries, according to the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Japan continues to halt new entries of foreign nationals in principle as it is taking more time than initially expected for the government to stem the number of infections since early January, when it peaked at more than 2,500 cases per day in Tokyo.

With the decision, the government will also have to review its growth strategy, given that expectations for inbound visitors to revive the Japanese economy were high, especially before the games were delayed for one year due to the outbreak of the virus.

On March 3, the representatives of the five organizing bodies, which also include the International Paralympic Committee and the Tokyo metropolitan government, agreed to make a decision on overseas spectators by the end of this month.

They will then make a call in April on the number of spectators to be allowed into venues based on Japanese restrictions on attendance at large events.

While the one-year postponement of the games has caused the cost to balloon to at least 1.64 trillion yen ($15 billion), the organizing committee was expecting to make 90 billion yen from ticket sales.

The committee now needs to proceed with refunding foreign ticket holders and it is expected to separately consider what to do with foreign spectators to be invited by corporate sponsors of the games.

It has not publicly disclosed the total number of tickets to be sold, but some officials have said it was likely to be over 9 million before the games were rescheduled one year ago.

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China's Sinovac COVID-19 Vaccine Apr 12, 2021 5:51:28 GMT

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Post by Admin on Apr 12, 2021 5:51:28 GMT

In a rare admission of the weakness of Chinese coronavirus vaccines, the country’s top disease control official says their effectiveness is low and the government is considering mixing them to get a boost.

Chinese vaccines “don’t have very high protection rates,” said the director of the China Centers for Disease Control, Gao Fu, at a conference Saturday in the southwestern city of Chengdu.

Beijing has distributed hundreds of millions of doses abroad while trying to promote doubt about the effectiveness of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine made using the previously experimental messenger RNA, or mRNA, process.

“It’s now under formal consideration whether we should use different vaccines from different technical lines for the immunization process,” Gao said.

Officials at a news conference Sunday didn’t respond directly to questions about Gao’s comment or possible changes in official plans. But another CDC official said developers are working on mRNA-based vaccines.

Gao did not respond to a phone call requesting further comment.

“The mRNA vaccines developed in our country have also entered the clinical trial stage,” said the official, Wang Huaqing. He gave no timeline for possible use.

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

The coronavirus pandemic, which began in central China in late 2019, marks the first time the Chinese drug industry has played a role in responding to a global health emergency.

Vaccines made by Sinovac, a private company, and Sinopharm, a state-owned firm, have made up the majority of Chinese vaccines distributed to several dozen countries including Mexico, Turkey, Indonesia, Hungary, Brazil and Turkey.

The effectiveness of a Sinovac vaccine at preventing symptomatic infections was found to be as low as 50.4% by researchers in Brazil, near the 50% threshold at which health experts say a vaccine is useful. By comparison, the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine has been found to be 97% effective.

Health experts say Chinese vaccines are unlikely to be sold to the United States, western Europe and Japan due to the complexity of the approval process.

A Sinovac spokesman, Liu Peicheng, acknowledged varying levels of effectiveness have been found but said that can be due to the age of people in a study, the strain of virus and other factors.