China's Vaccine Diplomacy Stumbles Due to Unclear Clinical Trial Results

[Image source= AP Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Park Byung-hee] The Washington Post (WP) reported on the 23rd that China's vaccine diplomacy is facing setbacks due to the incomplete disclosure of clinical trial results of Chinese-made COVID-19 vaccines.

Singapore received the Sinovac vaccine from China last month but has not yet approved its emergency use and is only storing it. Instead, Singapore has administered about 800,000 doses of Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines as of the day before. Singapore requested additional data from China to evaluate the quality, safety, and efficacy of the Sinovac vaccine, and it is known that Singapore began reviewing the data submitted by Sinovac starting yesterday.

Vaccinations have not been carried out so far because China has not sufficiently disclosed information related to clinical trials. Sinovac and another Chinese pharmaceutical company, Sinopharm, have only partially disclosed the results of their COVID-19 vaccine clinical trials on their own. Unlike other COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers who published clinical trial results in reputable academic journals, Sinopharm did not publish its clinical trial results in any academic journal.

Articles published in academic journals undergo peer review, ensuring reliability. The Russian-developed vaccine "Sputnik V" overcame distrust after its clinical trial results were published in the international academic journal The Lancet. Pfizer and Moderna published their clinical trial results in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) in December last year.

According to The New York Times (NYT), the Sinovac vaccine has received emergency use approval in 17 countries including Hong Kong, Brazil, and Mexico, excluding China. The Sinopharm vaccine has been approved for use in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain outside China, and emergency use has been approved in 14 countries including Argentina and Colombia.

However, the Sinovac vaccine showed over 80% efficacy in clinical trials in Turkey but just over 50% in Brazilian trials, causing controversy due to varying effectiveness in different trials. The Sinopharm vaccine's self-disclosed efficacy is 79%.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.