Chinese CDC director denies admitting low efficacy of coronavirus vaccine

• CDC Director denies reports claiming that the director "admitted" Chinese COVID-19 vaccines have a low protection rate.
  
• Gao Fu clarifies he said that to improve the efficacy, adjustment in vaccine procedures and use of different vaccines may be considered.
• "If we [went] with the traditional way of developing a vaccine, we wouldn't have had a vaccine within a year," says Gao.
  

The Chinese Center of Disease Control (CDC) director has denied reports  claiming that he "admitted" Chinese COVID-19 vaccines have a low protection rate, stating that "it was a complete misunderstanding."

According to a news report published in Global Times, the head of the China CDC, Gao Fu clarified that he only offered a scientific vision: that to improve the efficacy, adjustment of vaccination procedures and sequential inoculation of different types of vaccines might be options.

In an exclusive interview with the publication, Fu maintained: "The protection rates of all vaccines in the world are sometimes high, and sometimes low. How to improve their efficacy is a question that needs to be considered by scientists around the world."

The health expert suggested that we consider adjusting the vaccination process, such as the number of doses and intervals, and adopting sequential vaccination with different types of vaccines.

Read more: Coronavirus: China considers mixing vaccines to improve efficacy of jabs

"This is also the first time that humans have been vaccinated with a novel coronavirus vaccine. All the vaccination procedures we have adopted so far have been based on previous extrapolations of other virus vaccines inoculation, and that extrapolation has worked pretty well," the Chinese official said. 

He added that we can make adjustments based on the characteristics of the novel coronavirus and the vaccination situation in order to attain desired results.

"If we [went] with the traditional way of developing a vaccine, we wouldn't have had a vaccine within a year. But scientists all over the world developed COVID-19 vaccines within a few months, which is the first time in the world's history. There are many scientific questions that need to be addressed," Gao said.

Gao called for people to get inoculated as the benefits far outweigh the risks. "Vaccines have to be used fairly and the world should share vaccines. If the world doesn't share vaccines, the virus will share the world," he said.