As Adverse Reactions Grow, China’s Vaccine Diplomacy Should Raise International Alarm

Healthcare workers protest being given Sinovac vaccine instead of Pfizer-BioNTech in Manila, Philippines, on Feb. 26, 2021. Ezra Acayan/Getty Images

China has been touting the success of its COVID-19 vaccines at home and abroad, luring a number of countries into purchasing Sinovac and Sinopharm, two front-runner Chinese vaccines. Moreover, whenever a foreign sale is made, Chinese authorities immediately cite it as proof of popularity and effectiveness in the propaganda it uses inside China.

Such propaganda has indeed achieved a certain amount of success both inside the country and in the international community.

However, recent deaths and the low protection rate of Chinese-made vaccines revealed by clinical trials and real-life cases, should put an end to that self-proclaimed “success.”

Deaths and Serious Adverse Reactions in Hong Kong and Mainland

To date, Hong Kong authorities have reported 14 deaths in Hong Kong that occurred after vaccination with Sinovac, while another 13 people have developed facial paralysis after receiving the vaccine, since vaccinations began 50 days ago.

In mainland China, where approximately 160 million people have received vaccines, no adverse reactions have been reported by state-run media.

Chinese citizens who experienced or witnessed serious side-effects have to share their stories on social media or through overseas Chinese media, while not revealing their identities.

U.S.-based Chinese radio network Sound of Hope reported a death on April 14. In late March, Wang Dajun, 43, in Lingxi Village, Zhuanghe City, Liaoning Province, received a COVID-19 vaccine around 10 a.m. and died that evening, leaving behind three children. Local authorities have since blocked such reports.

A resident from eastern China’s Jiangsu Province told Radio Free Asia that he saw a person collapse after being vaccinated.

Similarly, a man in Beijing posted on Chinese social media that his wife collapsed 10 minutes after inoculation. His post was soon removed from the platform. Another Beijing resident who had read the post later shared the incident with Radio Free Asia.

Low Protection Rates

A recent study at the University of Chile found that a single dose of Sinovac vaccine is only 3 percent protective in the 28 days between the first and second doses, meaning that the first dose has almost no effect and people who received the first dose are just as vulnerable to infection as those who did not.

According to the study, within the first two weeks of getting the second dose of Sinovac, the vaccine is only 27.7 percent protective; two or more weeks after the second dose, the efficacy rate rises to 56.5 percent.

Instituto Butantan in Brazil also published results of the Sinovac Phase III clinical study on April 11, showing a protection rate of 50.7 percent, similar to the Chilean-funded study. The results have not been peer-reviewed or published in academic journals.

In fact, Sinovac is not the only problematic vaccine produced by China’s pharmaceutical companies. In March, Ernesto Bustamante, a Peruvian microbiologist and former director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), revealed on a local television program that according to Phase III clinical trial results, Sinopharm’s Covid-19 vaccine made at its Wuhan campus was 33 percent effective, and the Covid-19 vaccine made at its Beijing campus was only 11.5 percent effective, well below the CCP’s claim of nearly 80 percent, and below the World Health Organization’s minimum threshold requirement for vaccines to be “more than 50 percent” effective.

Infections After Vaccination

A number of people who have received Chinese-made vaccines still get COVID-19 post vaccination.

In Chile, archbishop Celestino Aos, 76, and auxiliary bishop Alberto Lorenzelli of Santiago tested positive for the CCP Virus after receiving the second dose of Sinovac on March 11, the Chilean Roman Catholic Church said in a Twitter post on April 10.

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan and President Arif Alvi were also diagnosed with Covid after receiving the Sinopharm vaccine.

The low protection rate of the vaccines exported by the CCP has also been indirectly “confirmed” by Chinese media. A total of 126 members of the Philippine Presidential Security Corps (PSG) have tested positive for the CCP Virus, and 45 are still ill, according to China News on April 7. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte had to postpone his weekly public speech due to this unexpected situation.

All 126 PSG members were given “smuggled” Sinopharm vaccine as early as September 2020. China News cited the illegal sale in December last year to tout the popularity of Chinese-made COVID-19 vaccines. Shortly after Philippine’s announcement of PSG infections, China News removed its report.

On March 18, a doctor responsible for COVID-19 testing in a hospital in Xi’an, Shaanxi Province, was diagnosed with COVID-19, although he had received two doses of Chinese-made vaccine.

To date, China has developed five types of COVID-19 vaccines. Due to lack of transparency and unpublished trial results, none of these vaccines have been approved by the World Health Organization for emergency use.

As more and more incidents of infection occurring after vaccination surface, the director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Gao Fu, finally admitted that current Chinese-made vaccines offer low protection against the CCP virus.

Gao made the statement when giving a presentation at a conference on April 10. Mixing different types of vaccines is one of the methods he proposed to improve efficacy.

China’s Vaccine Diplomacy May Have Serious Consequences

China’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi claimed on April 3 that China is currently providing COVID-19 vaccines to more than 80 countries and 3 international organizations. According to British science intelligence company Airfinity, by the end of March, China had exported 115 million doses of vaccine.

Gao’s proposal to change vaccination protocols will have a huge impact on those countries and international organizations that bought vaccines from China.

The Epoch Times previously reported that almost all countries that chose to use Sinovac for mass inoculation, such as Chile, Turkey, Brazil, and Pakistan, have seen a drastic surge in new COVID-19 cases. In comparison, countries that administered vaccines not made in China gradually curbed the spread of the virus, such as Israel and the United Kingdom.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.