UK scientists are continuing to highlight Chile as a warning of what can happen even with widespread vaccination. The new angle is to draw attention to the poor efficacy of the Chinese vaccines. The Mail has the story.
Professor Ian Jones, a virologist at the University of Reading, told MailOnline the figures from Chile suggest the Chinese vaccines “will not be enough to stop the virus circulating”.
Despite fully vaccinating a quarter of its population and getting a single dose to 40%, Chile has seen its infection rate double since mid-February, rising from 177 daily cases per million to 372. More than 80% of the country has been forced to retreat back into lockdown, which was used by No 10’s scientists as proof the UK is not out of the woods.
However, the South American nation is primarily using the CoronaVac vaccine, made by Chinese pharma giant Sinovac, which a University of Chile study found was only 3% effective after the first dose, rising to 56.5% two weeks after the second. Another study in Brazil found efficacy could be as low as 50%, which just meets the World Health Organization’s threshold for an acceptable vaccine.
For comparison, the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines have efficacy rates of 95% and 94%, respectively, while AstraZeneca’s is about 79%. Trials of tens of thousands of patients given the US and British jabs found they stopped up to 100% of hospitalisations and deaths, compared to CoronaVac’s 84%.
Even China appeared to acknowledge the shortcomings of its vaccines at the weekend, when Gao Fu, the director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, admitted “protection rates of existing vaccines are not high. It’s now under formal consideration whether we should use different vaccines from different technical lines for the immunisation process.”
However, since then the Chinese Government has put out an interview with Fu where he claims his comments were “a complete misunderstanding”. He said: “The protection rates of all vaccines in the world are sometimes high, and sometimes low. How to improve their efficacy is a question that needs to be considered by scientists around the world.”
Chilean Science Minister Andres Couve also came to the defence of the Sinovac vaccine. On Sunday he revealed that the health ministry will shortly publish a real world study on the efficacy of the CoronaVac vaccine, saying it was important to focus on the data and the effectiveness in reducing serious illness. Likewise, Heriberto Garcia, head of Chile’s Public Health Institute, said people should ignore headlines. “The University of Chile study and the study the Health Ministry will release say the same thing: the number of people who fall ill and are hospitalised has decreased,” he told local newspaper La Tercera. “We are going down the right path.”
A number of UK scientists criticised the Chinese vaccines, according to the Mail.
Professor Gabriel Scally, a public health expert at the University of Bristol, told MailOnline the crisis in Chile “was not a great tribute to the Chinese vaccines”.
He added: “They haven’t been approved by any of the major medical regulators and there is very limited research evidence, they certainly don’t appear to have a high level of effectiveness in the real world. And in the absence of data it’s very difficult to know [how effective they really are]. The only benefit of them is the fact they’re cheap.”
On whether countries rolling out Chinese vaccines should fear a resurgence of the virus, he said: “I think they would have a right to be worried.”
But he admitted that a vaccine that’s partially effective is better than none at all.
He told MailOnline: “That 50% mark is the line in the sand that’s drawn by the WHO, which is great. But I think it’s beginning to dawn on people these [Chinese] vaccines aren’t going to solve the problem completely.”
Professor Scally said the UK was “in a different place” because it has highly effective vaccines in its arsenal, adding: “As long as we take it easy [coming out of lockdown] we should be fine.”
However, other scientists see Chile as a warning about the limited effectiveness of vaccines more generally. Chris Whitty told a Downing Street press conference last week: “We want to do things in a steady way because the assumption that just because you vaccinate lots of people, then the problem goes away, I think Chile is quite a good corrective to that.”
Sir David King, a former UK Chief Scientific Adviser, told Sky News yesterday:
From the point of view of the population itself, we’re all dying to get out of lockdown. From the point of view of the epidemic, I think it’s all a little bit more worrying. Chile is a country where the rate of vaccination amongst the population was third highest in the world – they were ahead of us in terms of the number of people who have had the vaccine – and they’re suddenly now into a third wave. They now have 7,600 cases a day and the total number of people in Chile now who have Covid is over a million. So what has happened in Chile is very, very surprising – a high percentage of people have been vaccinated, but here’s a variant of the disease coming through the country.
As Lockdown Sceptics noted last week, Chile is not a good a comparison for the UK, firstly because it appears to be using a less effective vaccine, and partly because it is in the southern hemisphere and so is currently in the middle of autumn. It is the equivalent of mid-October there, so some increase in respiratory disease should be expected as the winter flu season gets underway. The country is also some way behind the UK in terms of Covid deaths per million, which puts the comparison into some perspective.
We also need to keep in mind that the UK currently has one of the lowest Covid infection rates in the world. Are vaccines contributing to this? You’d have to bet on it. The results from the trials and population studies for the Pfizer and AstraZeneca jabs are impressive and they are surely effective at reducing serious and symptomatic Covid (and hence also transmission, as widespread asymptomatic transmission is a myth).
However, that doesn’t mean we can necessarily expect no new Covid surge at some level this autumn and winter. Even with the vaccines there will still be a winter flu season. It may be a mild one, helped by the vaccines, or it may be less mild. In this respect, it’s worth bearing in mind that studies in care homes have found the vaccines have significantly less efficacy among the frail elderly, with a PHE study finding Pfizer down to 62% effective and AstraZeneca only 36% effective after seven weeks. Similarly, a large Danish study found Pfizer only 64% effective among this demographic. With 40% of Covid deaths in England and Wales last spring being care home residents, a lower efficacy in this vulnerable group may have a significant impact on winter Covid mortality. There is also evidence that some of the new variants partially evade the antibodies created by the vaccines.
This is not, of course, an argument to maintain restrictions until we have better vaccines or endless boosters. Far from it. It is an appeal for realism about how low we can reasonably expect the level of risk from COVID-19 to go. We now have vaccines, and they seem to be helping (and let’s hope the rare blood clots are as bad as the side-effects get). Now is the time to return to normal, just as a number of states in America have done without experiencing catastrophic consequences.
It is not the time to think we can create a 100% effective barrier against a seasonal respiratory disease, as the Government appears to be aiming for, with Boris justifying restrictions because “vaccines are not giving 100% protection”, and the BBC promoting the need for continued restrictions because vaccines are not “100% effective”. It is the height of folly to think we can create an impenetrable wall of vaccination and coerce everyone to play their part in building this imaginary edifice. The vaccines, for those who wish to have them, are surely good enough. We must stop living under the shadow of Covid.
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If I was forced I would have AZ over mRNA. mRNA have never been licensed because they always run into safety concerns. That was in the risk-averse days when we tested before emergency licensing and giving to kids.
Luckily I’m not living in the medical wing of a Nazi death camp so I won’t bother with any of them.
That “spokesperson” for the EU Commission should be jailed for saying that mRNA vaccines have “proven their worth”. It’s an emergency use of a completely unlicensed gene therapy. Now it’s the only vaccine available.
AZ have more reported side effects and deaths than the Pfizer jab.
I haven’t checked but the difference in reported deaths could be statistically significant.
so far.
I’m thinking 5 or 10 years out. mRNA is truly novel and has always failed because of safety. AZ is at least a reputable technology applied slightly differently
either way – my choice can’t be based on 6 months of data
total risks = known risks + unknown risks
Also, of course,
known risks = reported risks + unreported/deliberately concealed risks
Astra sever side-affects and deaths to 01/04/21
Reactions: 440871 Fatal:472
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/977006/COVID-19_vaccine_AstraZeneca_analysis_print.pdf
Pfizer sever side-affects and deaths to 01/04/21
Reactions: 124371 Fatal: 302 https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/977005/COVID-19_mRNA_Pfizer-_BioNTech_Vaccine_Analysis_Print.pdf
And remember folks “If It Saves Just One Life” A fallacy that obviously doesn’t apply to the NHS vaccination agenda…
Now get outdoors and clap!
Would be good to know the percentage split in numbers of vaccinations between Pfizer and AZ in the UK so we can make a judgement on how “deadly” they are compared to each other. Anyone have those numbers or know where they are?
Did you notice that they’ve set the earliest reaction date to 3-2-1921? (2nd page up top). Strange..
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/977006/COVID-19_vaccine_AstraZeneca_analysis_print.pdf
And Pfizer’s is set to 3-4-1990
I wonder if that is in order to give it a rate of fatality that matches the flu?
And by the way if you have a young wife, mother or daughter… the AstraZeneca injection is causing a disorder called Vaccine-induced prothrombotic immune thrombocytopenia, (VIPIT) just in case you choose or need to go legal on a medic or authority enforcing these jabs.
On the other hand, if your mother, daughter or wife has ever taken the contraceptive pill without worrying they probably shouldn’t worry about the risk of the AZ vaccine. The number of thromboses from the pill far outstrips the AZ vaccine.
Well that’s not true. I took the pill when younger and didn’t worry. The differences were:
1) I knew about the risks and what to look out for….it’s only now that the MHRA is being more candid about the jab. They sat on their hands for a scandalous amount of time.
2) Things like high blood pressure which are known to predispose you to clotting on the pill were monitored and pill not advised for those with issues, to lower risk further…while it is not clear who is at high risk of VITT from the jab
3) there was a tangible benefit to the pill (not getting pregnant, a very high probability event in my 20s (one might say 100pct, with hindsight) and one which would have been life altering in a way I was not looking for).The pill is mostly taken by younger women under 35 ….people who are at very very very low risk of COVID harm ….so where is the tangible benefit for the jab for this age group? It’s tiny. Not remotely comparable to not getting pregnant.
Wait for the Novavax or Valvena if you need one to travel
You cannot speak of reason to the Dane
And lose your voice.
Hamlet, Act 1, scene 2.
“On the lifting of restrictions in the UK and the success of the vaccination programme so far, Dr Nabarro says: “(Some say) this is an opportunity for the UK to emerge from the pandemic, well I say ‘perhaps’.
“I have to stress that I am not 100% sure that the world is going to find it easy to vaccinate itself out of this pandemic because the emergence of variants that are capable of escaping protection of current vaccines.”
Never had a coronavirus vaccine before in 50 years of trying.
Nabarro is right in that we won’t vaccinate our way out of this and the quicker we give up the less side effects we will have to cope with. He also said the only thing lockdowns do is make the poor poorer. Looks like WHO advice is now to follow the pre-pandemic pandemic plans. A bit of handwashing and don’t visit a care home if you are ill.
Hopefully this will result in increased scrutiny by regulators of the remaining vaccines which no doubt have their own skeletons in their cupboard.
As well as kicking vaccine passports into the long grass, even if only for the time being.
Pfizers jab has Polyethylene glycol (PEG) in it…..
Just what the doctor ordered!
Sleeves up….
Antifreeze to us lay people!
Actually no, it’s ethylene glycol in antifreeze. But still wouldn’t want it.
I understood it was ethylene glycol in the Pfizer jab which is a known carcinogenic.
No, the documents say PEG. However, PEG seems not to be a particularly good thing to have added to your blood, and it’s possible for some of it to breakdown into ethylene glycol.
It’s a laxative
Shit
Absolutely correct. There will be fewer vaccinated due to shortages and the vaccine hesitancy is increasing each day although not reported in MSM.Netherlands has one of the highest vaccine hesitancy and many in health care refuse to be vaccinated. Very hard to see how Netherlands can reach high vaccination rate at all. Do you think a EU country with a low vaccine uptake would be happy to have their citizens discriminated in travel when such EU rules must be unaminous?
I’m sure Brussels has our best interests at heart, not:
“Brussels would rather prioritise Covid vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna – both of which use mRNA technology”
The EU are so worried that they won’t be extending the contract but not so worried that they won’t use up existing stocks on the suckers next in line for jabbing ?
Exactly. This will pacify the really really dumb.
Still won’t take any of these.
Here’s the story of a young family left devastated after their mum was given the Pfizer. Obviously it’s just a coincidence.
https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/fit-healthy-everything-live-for-20376989