New York: As the world struggles to find an effective vaccine for coronavirus, China has already begun injecting its unproven vaccine to workers at state-owned companies, government officials, vaccine company staff, teachers, supermarket employees and people travelling risky areas abroad.
The New York Times reported that the officials are laying out plans to give shots to even more people, citing emergency use, amounting to a big wager that the vaccines will eventually prove to be safe and effective.
Harmful side effects
While the unproven vaccines might have harmful side effects, Dr Kim Mulholland, a pediatrician at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute in Australia, was quoted as saying, “My worry for the employees of the companies is it may be difficult for them to refuse.”
As a large number of people in China are getting injected with the unproven vaccine, it can be said that none of the people is getting shot on their choice. It is reported that the companies have asked people to sign a non-disclosure agreement before getting injected with the vaccine to prevent them from giving any information to the media.
“It is not clear how many people in China have received coronavirus vaccines. Sinopharm, a Chinese state-owned company with a vaccine candidate in late-stage trials, has said hundreds of thousands of people have received its shots. Sinovac, a Beijing-based company, said over 10,000 people in Beijing had been injected with its vaccine. Separately, it said nearly all its employees — around 3,000 in total — and their families had taken it,” The New York Times said.
Negative consequences
“That [unproven vaccine] has all sorts of negative consequences…They could be infected and not know it, or they could be spreading the infection because they are relatively asymptomatic if the vaccine partially works,” Jerome Kim, head of the International Vaccine Institute, was quoted as saying.
While there is a growing concern over China giving the unproven vaccine to its people, Zheng, the health official, told China Central Television that during the winter season, “the government might consider expanding the scope of who qualified for emergency use, adding people who work in markets, transportation and the service industry,” Times reported.