Bahrain, UAE Offer Pfizer Shot as Booster to Those Who Received Chinese Vaccine

No antibodies found in 30 percent of recipients of Sinopharm vaccine in Serbia

A young woman receives a COVID-19 vaccine at the Bahrain International Exhibition and Convention Center in the capital Manama on Dec. 24, 2020. Bahrain has approved both the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine and another developed by Chinese firm Sinopharm. Mazen Mahdi/AFP via Getty Images

Bahrain and The United Arab Emirates (UAE) are now urging citizens who have been fully vaccinated with Chinese-made COVID-19 vaccines to take a shot of the Pfizer vaccine as a booster for protection. At the same time, it’s reported in Serbia that 30 percent of the elderly who have been inoculated with Chinese vaccines have no antibodies.

This comes as more death and miscarriages after inoculation of Chinese vaccines were reported in Hong Kong over the past week.

The Chinese Communist Regime has been pushing “vaccine diplomacy” over the past year by offering Chinese-made COVID-19 vaccines to countries in the Middle East, South America, and Eastern Europe, despite unfinished phase 3 trials and unreleased clinical trial data.

Serbia is the first European country to receive COVID-19 vaccines made by Chinese state-owned company Sinopharm. According to a report by The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), an unpublished real-world study showed that among the 150 vaccine recipients with an average age of over 65 in the country, 29 percent did not have any antibodies against the CCP virus three months after full vaccination (two doses) with the Sinopharm vaccine.

The doctor who headed the study at the University of Belgrade told the Journal, “The Sinopharm vaccine is not immunogenic enough, and it appears that its impact is especially low on elderly recipients.”

A medical officer administers the Chinese-made Sinopharm vaccine to a Serbian army soldier during a vaccination operation against COVID-19 for army personnel in Belgrade, on May 13, 2021. Andrej Isakovic/AFP via Getty Images

Chinese officials previously stated that the Chinese COVID-19 vaccines are not allowed to be used on people over 60 years of age in China due to a lack of relevant clinical trial data. However, in the countries that bought the vaccines, the elderly are given priority to receive the vaccine. Taiwanese media criticized the Chinese regime, saying it is using people in the recipient countries as lab rats.

Both the UAE and Bahrain are now seeing a surge of COVID-19 infections, despite having inoculated a large number of their citizens with the Sinopharm vaccine.

So far, 47 percent of Bahrain’s population has been fully vaccinated, with 60 percent having received the Sinopharm shot. However, the local epidemic has not slowed down. The number of new infections per single day jumped from 200 since the end of last year when the vaccination started to 3,000 per day in the end of May.

The number of confirmed cases is now at a record high in Bahrain, and since the end of May officials have been offering the Pfizer vaccine as a booster shot to those already fully vaccinated with Sinopharm.

Bahrain health officials are especially urging vaccinated people over 50-year-old, those who are obese, or those who have chronic illnesses to get the Pfizer shot as a booster.

The UAE has made the Sinopharm vaccine available to the general public since December 2020, and has been offering third Sinopharm doses since March after it was discovered that the vaccines had not produced enough antibodies for some recipients.

In March, Gao Fu, director of China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention said that a third dose of Chinese-made COVID-19 vaccines may be needed to boost their efficacy.

The UAE started using the Pfizer vaccine, which was made in conjunction with Germany’s BioNTech, in April.

Besides the low efficacy, there have been reports of serious side-effects from Chinese vaccines.

In the last week of May, health officials in Hong Kong reported that another 12 people died after taking the Sinovac vaccine, bringing the total number of deaths to 80, while another four pregnant women had miscarriages after injections of the vaccine, bringing the total to 23.

Despite the quality issues and lack of transparency in trial data and side effects, the World Health Organization recently approved both the Sinopharm and Sinovac vaccines for emergency use.