No mixed Covid-19 booster shots for China until scientists are sure, top disease expert says
- A mix-and-match strategy may even be better than a third jab using the same vaccine, but regulators must wait for confirmed data, Shao Yiming told CCTV
- A virologist at the University of Hong Kong described China’s insistence on using the same vaccine as a booster as ‘conservative’
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“From a scientific perspective, we understand that the mixing and matching of vaccines – including [what we have observed] in the use of vaccines for other diseases – can yield practical results that are as good as taking a third shot using the same vaccine,” Shao said.
“In some cases, mixing and matching may even give better results.”
But regulators can only give the green light when there is sufficient data to confirm safety and effectiveness, he added.
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“In that sense, we need to speed up our research to collect more data. Right now, the regulators’ decision is still that the booster should use the same vaccine [instead of mixing and matching],” he said.
“But once we receive more data from different types of vaccines, we will then make new recommendations,” he added.
Shao reiterated that China would give the third jab in an orderly way, similar to how vaccines were first trialled – starting with high-risk and vulnerable groups, then gradually rolling them out to the general population.
“Medical workers, border staff, and workers processing import shipments at ports are at the highest risk. So the third shot will start with them,” he said.
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Jin Dong-Yan, a virologist from the University of Hong Kong, has described China’s insistence on using the same vaccine as a booster as “conservative”.
A guide published by People’s Daily, the Communist Party mouthpiece, on the social media platform Weibo on Thursday said that many places across China were offering booster shots to those aged 18 and over, and fully vaccinated for at least six months.
Meanwhile, CCTV also reported that medical workers and those working at locations with high exposure to imported Covid-19 cases such as airports, as well as vulnerable groups, who had been fully vaccinated for at least six months should receive a booster shot.
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The booster drive comes as China battles a resurgence of cases that has spread to several provinces and aims to strengthen defences against Covid-19 ahead of winter.
Users on Weibo, China’s answer to Twitter, voiced fears that the booster shot could become increasingly mandatory, as grass-roots party cadres have sometimes defied recommendations from national authorities in order to complete quotas.
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The National Health Commission has repeatedly said Covid-19 vaccination is voluntary, but many authorities have made it impossible to enter public spaces without a health QR code that showed the person was vaccinated.
“Tasks are going to be delegated to the local authorities again,” one user wrote under the CCTV report about the booster shot.
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A Weibo user said officials in their village announced via loudhailers that people who had been fully vaccinated for at least two months could get the booster shot, before correcting themselves the next day to say that the gap should be at least six months.
Social media users also asked questions such as should pregnant women or those planning to conceive get the shot, and whether it was safe for someone who had been recently inoculated for another virus, such as the human papillomavirus.
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Chinese pharmaceutical companies have developed five different kinds of vaccine technologies, with Sinovac and Sinopharm’s inactivated vaccines – which use dead virus particles to train the immune system – administered to most people in the county.