China mulls Covid vaccine cocktail to increase efficacy

By Vipin Vijayan | First Published Apr 12, 2021, 10:36 AM IST

Hours after authorities in Brazil found that the Chinese vaccine was only 50.7% effective against the variant in the country, Gao Fu, the director of the Chinese Center of Disease Control, said that inoculation using vaccines of different technical lines is being considered.

China is officially mulling over mixing Covid-19 vaccines to increase their efficacy.

Hours after authorities in Brazil found that the Chinese vaccine was only 50.7% effective against the country's variant, Gao Fu, the director of the Chinese Center of Disease Control, said that inoculation using vaccines of different technical lines is being considered.

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Claiming that his earlier statements on the efficacy of Chinese vaccines had been misinterpreted, Gao said that the protection rates of all vaccines in the world are sometimes high and sometimes low. Still, scientists must explore ways to increase their efficacy.

Suggesting ways to increase efficacy, the Chinese CDC head said that the number of doses and intervals could be adjusted and sequential vaccination with different types of vaccines can be adopted.

Ironically, clinical test data reveals that Chinese vaccines have the lowest efficacy rates compared to other vaccines.

This is not the first time the idea to mix different vaccines has been mooted. British researchers are examining a possible combination of Pfizer-BioNTech and the AstraZeneca vaccine.

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