Moderna, Pfizer, AstraZeneca: it's all for them.
The race for Covid-19 vaccines seems to have narrowed in recent weeks to a sprint of three after the publication of very encouraging results as to their effectiveness.
Pfizer even obtained, Wednesday, December 2, the authorization to deploy its vaccine in the United Kingdom as of next week.
Yet, far from this Western media uproar, more than a million Chinese have been vaccinated against Covid-19, said Liu Jingzhen, CEO of Sinopharm, a pharmaceutical group that has developed a vaccine candidate, interviewed by the scientific journal Nature, Thursday December 3.
"So far, there have been no cases of complications," added the leader.
At least four vaccines in phase III trials
Chinese laboratories have already signed contracts to sell hundreds of millions of doses of their vaccines to countries such as Brazil, Mexico, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, the American channel CNN reported on December 2.
Mohammed ben Rachid al-Maktoum, the Emir of Dubai, even volunteered to participate in a Chinese clinical trial in early November.
While receiving the COVID-19 vaccine today.
We wish everyone safety and great health, and we are proud of our teams who have worked relentlessly to make the vaccine available in the UAE.
The future will always be better in the UAE.
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- HH Sheikh Mohammed (@HHShkMohd) November 3, 2020
However, this vast Chinese effort in the field of vaccines receives only very limited media enthusiasm.
"It's something that surprises me and I admit not knowing why we do not talk about it more", admits a British scientist reached by e-mail, who preferred to remain anonymous.
All we know is "that there are at least four vaccines which are in phase III of the trials", that is to say the last step which consists in testing the molecule on the most volunteers. possible, summarizes Bernd Salzberger, director of the infectious disease department at the university clinic in Regensburg (Germany), contacted by France 24. Two of them seem to have obtained an emergency authorization to be distributed to certain categories of the population, like military or employees working overseas, the New York Times said in a Chinese vaccine survey released on Nov. 17.
Three of these Chinese vaccines are based on so-called inactivated virus technology.
"This is the oldest existing vaccine technique. It consists of taking a piece of the virus, making it harmless and injecting it into the patient's body so that his immune system develops an appropriate response", notes Zoltan Kis, specialist in vaccines at Imperial College London, contacted by France 24.
The advantage is that you know how to minimize the risk of having dangerous side effects.
But these are also the vaccines that take the longest to develop.
The latest Chinese vaccine uses a technique similar to that developed by Oxford for AstraZeneca.
A dose for 60 dollars
But what all of these Chinese vaccines lack is the data.
Unlike its Western competitors, there have been no announcements about their effectiveness, nor publications in an international scientific journal that would provide a better understanding of how they work.
"I couldn't find anything anywhere," confirms German scientist Bernd Salzberger.
A vagueness that is beginning to worry some specialists both in China and abroad, notes the journal Nature.
"Everyone here wants to be the fastest to put their vaccine on the market even though we scientists do not even have the basic elements to be able to assess their effectiveness", recognizes in Nature a Chinese immunologist who preferred to keep the 'anonymity.
This is all the more problematic as several media have noted that these vaccines can, sometimes, be purchased on a street corner.
In Yiwu, south of Shanghai, the BBC in October followed locals queuing to get a dose of the vaccine for $ 60.
A month later, the New York Times confirmed that this trade continued in this city and that the prices had even been halved.
"It is distributed to anyone, provided they can pay and stand in line and the authorities do nothing against", the BBC is surprised.
But for Zoltan Kis, we must be careful not to judge the Chinese approach through the prism of our Western health rules.
"It is certain that if the results of the phase III tests had been made public it would be more reassuring, but the most important thing is that all the data have been transmitted to the authorities who authorized the use of these vaccines", underlines this research fellow at Imperial College London.
"It should be remembered that for Moderna, Pfizer and AstraZeneca we also only have the announcements made by press releases. There is certainly no reason to doubt their accuracy, but we do not yet have the scientific data. detailed for these vaccines, ”adds Bernd Salzberger.
>> Efficacy and authorization: the race for vaccines against Covid-19 is accelerating
Risk of vaccine diplomacy
This German researcher also specifies that it is no coincidence that the results of Chinese phase III trials are taking longer to arrive.
"In China, the epidemic is under control, so we had to find countries that were ready to conduct tests on Chinese vaccines and where the virus is still actively circulating to assess the effectiveness of the treatment," he said. .
And in the context of ongoing diplomatic tensions between Beijing and several countries - be it the United States, India or some of China's Asian neighbors - this was no small feat.
This is why these tests were carried out in Brazil, Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates.
But where, for the two scientists, this lack of transparency can become more embarrassing is if all these Chinese laboratories sell the doses of their vaccine around the world without offering more details on the results of the tests.
Beijing may, in fact, be tempted to want to outsmart everyone in order to lead what CNN calls "vaccine diplomacy".
Questioned for its way of handling the situation at the start of the pandemic, China may want to improve its image by widely distributing its vaccines.
Especially if the United States maintains its 'America First' strategy: "So far, Washington has not suggested that any percentage of its vaccine production be distributed to poor countries. China could take advantage of this to appear. more compassionate, ”said Yanzhong Huang, a specialist in health policy issues at the Council on International Relations, interviewed by CNN.
Bernd Salzberger hopes that at a minimum, countries that have agreed to buy Chinese vaccines will have their effectiveness validated by national health authorities before purchasing them.
Above all, he thinks that the WHO has an important and urgent role to play in order to establish "international standards accepted by all" to evaluate the effectiveness of vaccines against Covid-19.
This would be the best way to prevent the issue of vaccines from turning into a geopolitical rat race.
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