Abundance of Sinopharm jabs available, says CRA
THAILAND: The Chulabhorn Royal Academy (CRA) has given assurances there will be enough Sinopharm vaccine to go around if no one exceeds their allocation or jumps the queue.
CRA secretary-general Dr Nithi Mahanonda said on his Facebook page that millions of doses of Sinopharm vaccine have been ordered for local distribution.
However, they cannot be delivered to Thailand all at once as the production process, quality control and inspection take some time to complete. Everyone needs to be patient, he said.
“Please wait your turn and do not try to call me or Line-chat with me and ask for a VIP pass to cut the [allocation] queue. I cannot do that for you,” Dr Nithi said. He is believed to be referring to companies or organisations at the bottom of the list hoping for a boost.
Many in vulnerable groups including monks, the elderly and those living in crowded communities have not received their first jabs - they need to be taken care of first, he said, adding more time is needed to inspect the vaccine after its delivery to Thailand.
Dr Nithi said companies and organisations which could not order the Sinopharm vaccine earlier, need to be patient until the current backlog of orders is cleared. Then, they can place orders.
“There are no shortcuts or special treatment whatsoever,” he said.
The supply of vaccine will be delivered gradually, and the inspection of its quality usually takes a few days.
He said the CRA should not be blamed for any delay in vaccinations at hospitals as the academy had sent supplies to them ahead of time. “If there has been any delay, it is an internal issue related to the hospitals,” Dr Nithi added.
In the current first phase of distribution of Sinopharm by the CRA, the vaccine is free. “If anyone has had to pay money for it, you have been duped,” he said.
The CRA said yesterday (July 3) a total 67,992 people were vaccinated with the Sinopharm formula between June 25-30. Of those, 16,823 were given jabs at the CRA which found, during post-appointment monitoring, that 48 had experienced undesirable side-effects following the vaccination.
GPO denies it caused delay in Moderna jab deal
Meanwhile, the Government Pharmaceutical Organisation (GPO) said yesterday it is not at fault for leaving a contract to purchase the US-made Moderna vaccine unsigned, which led to claims it caused a delay in procuring the alternative vaccine.
GPO director Vitoon Danwiboon denied the organisation was to blame, insisting it cannot sign the contract until the Private Hospitals Association (PHA) comes up with the money to pay for the vaccine.
“If we go ahead and ink the deal without the budget being finalised first, the GPO cannot accept responsibility.
“The deal involves a large quantity of vaccine and is expensive. We have to wait until they [the PHA] gather the money to put down a deposit first before we proceed to sign the contract with Zuellig Pharma Co,” said Dr Vitoon, referring to the importer of the vaccine.
He expected the signing could take place early this month.
About 300 hospitals placed orders for the Moderna vaccine with the GPO which entered into a purchase contract with the manufacturer in the US.
The manufacturing company does not engage directly with private hospitals over vaccine purchases but sells through a state agency.
Speaking at press briefing broadcast via the Thai Kufah webpage yesterday, Dr Vitoon said the GPO contacted the Moderna company for the first time on Feb 25 to express its intention to buy the vaccine.
On Feb 28, Moderna replied that due to huge global demand for the vaccine, the first shipment would arrive in the kingdom in the first quarter of next year.
On April 2, the company said it was in talks with Zuellig Pharma which will be the sole importer of the Moderna vaccine.
Dr Vitoon said Zuellig said on May 15 the Moderna vaccine may only be secured through a government representative, referring to the GPO, given the company’s regulation on the use of vaccines in emergency situations.
“As a government representative agency, we contacted the company to buy the vaccine for resale to private hospitals,” he said.
After discussions with the company, it was agreed the first shipment would be brought forward from the first quarter of next year to the last quarter of this year. However, the GPO head said the company has kept the shipment timeline broad.
The private hospitals want to procure a total of nine million doses of the Moderna vaccine, he said.
On Friday, it was reported the GPO abruptly submitted a draft purchase contract for the Moderna vaccine to the Office of Attorney General (OAG) after the OAG said it never received the contract.
In a statement, the OAG dismissed media reports saying the draft procurement contract was still under review by the office.
Its remarks came after Dr Vitoon’s June 23 comments saying the GPO soon would submit the draft to the OAG.
“If all goes well, the first lot of five million doses of the Moderna vaccine will be sent between October and December, or between January and March next year,” he said.
Meanwhile, the government is also procuring 20 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine. The vaccine is expected to reach Thai shores in the last quarter of the year.
According to the Department of Disease Control, in charge of the Pfizer procurement, the OAG is likely to finish vetting the vaccine purchase contract tomorrow before forwarding it to the cabinet for endorsement. Some major Bangkok-based private hospitals have stopped taking pre-orders for the Moderna vaccine, saying they are booked.
Abundance of Sinopharm jabs available, says CRA
Top Chinese official admits vaccines have low effectiveness
Pull your head out Sabang...
BEIJING (AP) — China’s top disease control official, in a rare acknowledgement, said current vaccines offer low protection against the coronavirus and mixing them is among strategies being considered to boost their effectiveness.
China has distributed hundreds of millions of doses of domestically made vaccines abroad and is relying on them for its own mass immunization campaign.
But the director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Gao Fu, said at a conference Saturday their efficacy rates needed improving.
“We will solve the issue that current vaccines don’t have very high protection rates,” Gao said in a presentation on Chinese COVID-19 vaccines and immunization strategies at a conference in the southwestern city of Chengdu. “It’s now under consideration whether we should use different vaccines from different technical lines for the immunization process.”
He also praised the benefits of mRNA vaccines, the technology behind the two vaccines seen as the most effective, Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, months after questioning whether the then-unproven method was safe.
In a message to The Associated Press, Gao said late Sunday night he was speaking about the effectiveness rates for “vaccines in the world, not particularly for China.” He did not respond to further questions about which vaccines he was referring to.
He directed the AP to an interview he did with the state-owned Global Times, which has published several articles raising doubts about the safety of Pfizer’s mRNA vaccine. Gao was quoted by the outlet Sunday as saying he was misunderstood and merely talking in general terms about improving vaccine efficacy.
Beijing earlier tried to promote doubt about the effectiveness of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, which uses genetic code called messenger RNA, or mRNA, to prime the immune system.
Health officials at a news conference Sunday didn’t respond directly to questions about Gao’s comment or about possible changes in official plans. But another CDC official said Chinese developers are working on mRNA-based vaccines.
“The mRNA vaccines developed in our country have also entered the clinical trial stage,” said the official, Wang Huaqing. He gave no timeline for possible use.
Experts say mixing vaccines, or sequential immunization, might boost effectiveness. Researchers in Britain are studying a possible combination of Pfizer-BioNTech and the AstraZeneca vaccine.
Gao concluded his presentation Saturday with praise for mRNA vaccines and called for innovation in research.
“Everyone should consider the benefits mRNA vaccines can bring for humanity,” Gao said. “We must follow it carefully and not ignore it just because we already have several types of vaccines already.”
Gao previously questioned the safety of mRNA vaccines. He was quoted by the official Xinhua News Agency as saying in December he couldn’t rule out negative side effects because they were being used for the first time on healthy people, saying “there is a safety concern.”
Chinese state media and popular health and science blogs also questioned the safety and effectiveness of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, though large-scale trials and the rollout of the vaccines in the U.S. have established its safety.
China currently has five vaccines in use in its mass immunization campaign, three inactivated-virus vaccines from Sinovac and Sinopharm, a one-shot vaccine from CanSino, and the last from Gao’s team in partnership with Anhui Zhifei Longcom.
The effectiveness of the vaccines range from just over 50% to 79%, based on what the companies have said.
The shot from Gao’s team, was given emergency use approval a month ago, and has not publicly disclosed data yet about its efficacy.
Pfizer and Moderna’s vaccines, which are primarily being used in developed countries, have both been shown to be about 95% in protecting against COVID-19 in studies.
As of April 2, some 34 million people in China have received the full two doses of Chinese vaccines and about 65 million received one, according to Gao.
Globally, public health experts have said that any vaccine that is 50% effective would be useful, and many governments have been eager to use Chinese vaccines as rich countries around the world have snapped up shots from Pfizer and Moderna.
WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreysus said Friday that while one in four people in rich countries had received a vaccine, only one in 500 people in poorer countries had gotten a dose.
The coronavirus pandemic, which was first detected in central China in late 2019, marks the first time the Chinese drug industry has played a role in responding to a global health emergency.
Vaccines made by Sinovac, a private company, and Sinopharm, a state-owned firm, have made up the majority of Chinese vaccines distributed to several dozen countries including Mexico, Turkey, Indonesia, Hungary, Brazil and Turkey.
However, the companies have not publicly published peer-reviewed data on the final stage clinical trial research and been criticized for a lack of transparency.
Sinovac’s vaccine, for example, raised concerns when it was found to have different efficacy rates from each of the trials it conducted in different countries, ranging from around 50% to over 83%.
A Sinovac spokesman, Liu Peicheng, acknowledged varying levels of effectiveness have been found but said that can be due to the age of people in a study, the strain of virus and other factors.
Beijing has yet to approve any foreign vaccines for use in mainland China.
The Sinovac spokesman, Liu, said studies find protection “may be better” if time between vaccinations is longer than the current 14 days but gave no indication that might be made standard practice.
Top Chinese official admits vaccines have low effectiveness