LONG SHOT

China Finally Admits Its COVID-19 Vaccine Isn't Working So Well

In a rare acknowledgement of failure, China finally admits its homemade vaccines aren’t cutting it.

In a somewhat unusual moment of transparency, China has finally admitted its COVID—19 vaccines don't all provide much protection. China's Sinovac previously said trials in Brazil showed around 50 percent efficacy in preventing infection and Sinopharm's vaccines have efficacy rates of 79.34 percent, while the efficacy for CanSino is 65. Pfizer and Moderna have efficacy rates of 95 and 94 percent, respectively. Speaking at a medical conference Saturday, Gao Fu, the director of the China Centers for Disease Control, admitted that Chinese vaccines “don’t have very high protection rates,” and questioned whether it was time to pair them with other vaccines. “It’s now under formal consideration whether we should use different vaccines from different technical lines for the immunization process,” he added, according to the Associated Press. Beijing has not approved any foreign-made vaccines for use in China, where the pandemic started in late 2019.