China's disease prevention chief Gao Fu said that China will not require a sweeping novel Coronavirus vaccination program. According to him, a widespread vaccination won't be needed as the pathogen is effectively under control in China, at least for now.
The director of the Chinese Centre for Disease Control (CDC) Gao said the large-scale vaccine for COVID-19 would only require if there was a major outbreak—like the Wuhan Coronavirus outbreak. He said, "This is an issue of balancing risk and return."
Vaccination a Waste
As per Gao, it would be a waste to vaccinate everyone in China when the SARS-CoV-2 had largely been wiped out in the country. However, China reported 10 news cased of COVID-19 on Saturday, September 12 but all of them were imported.
The first batch of the Coronavirus vaccine should be given to the frontline medical and epidemic prevention workers said the CDC chief and added that later security, cleaning, and catering staff and civil servants working in crowded places will be immunized. But if another Wuhan like outbreak appears, then there should be "large-scale vaccination of residents."
Coronavirus Vaccine
There are almost 200 groups of researchers around the globe working to develop an effective Coronavirus vaccine. In China, vaccine developers are pursuing four types of technologies which include inactivated, virus-vectored, mRNA, and recombinant protein. Many of them are also preparing for mass production despite the vaccine candidates still undergoing the trial process.
Last week, China said that it has already inoculated hundreds of thousands of people under EUA or emergency use authorization granted to three vaccines after the completion of phase one and two trials. As per the reports, researchers found no adverse effects so far. In July, the CDC chief Gao said he was injected with one of the vaccine candidates to boost public confidence in the research.
As per the recent reports, Gao said that he would like to see them provided to the public for free but the Chinese government should take into consideration the balance between its fiscal capacity and the actual requirements for epidemic prevention and control.
He also talked about the emerging concerns over possible antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE) effects brought by vaccination. He said that since there has never been a COVID-19 vaccine developed before, which makes this case the very first in science, it is possible that it may induce ADE effects—that could lead to failures in immune response systems and cause the disease to worsen instead of being cured—"as any other firsts we will possibly face".
