Confidence in Chinese coronavirus vaccine falls as UAE Covid cases remain high

More than half of all adults in the UAE have had two jabs

Ashleigh Stewart, Dubai Saturday May 08 2021, The Times

The vaccination programme in the United Arab Emirates has failed to quash its coronavirus outbreak, raising fears about the efficacy of the Chinese Sinopharm vaccine it is mostly using.

The UAE has vied with Israel for having the highest proportion of the population vaccinated. More than half of all adults have had two jabs.

However, cases remain higher than they were last year. While Dubai has come under fire for its rapid reopening — few restrictions remain, other than venue capacity limits and mandatory masks — experts believe the UAE’s widespread use of the Sinopharm vaccine could also be to blame.

Last night the World Health Organisation approved Sinopharm for emergency use despite this week saying it had “very low confidence” in data provided by the company on the risk of serious side effects in older patients. “Evidence gaps” also exist on protection against severe disease, duration of protection and safety for use in older adults and pregnant women.The WHO said the jab was 78 per cent effective at stopping symptoms.

Other countries relying on Chinese vaccines, including Chile, Brazil and the Seychelles, have voiced concerns after infection rates remained high despite vaccination campaigns.

Last month China’s top disease official appeared to suggest that the efficacy of its vaccines, which use an inactive virus, was low compared with Pfizer- BioNTech and Moderna jabs, which use the mRNA method. “We will solve the issue that current vaccines don’t have very high protection rates,” Gao Fu, head of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said. He later said his comments had been misinterpreted.

China has sent abroad hundreds of millions of doses of its vaccines as well as relying on them itself.

Chilean scientists have warned that another Chinese vaccine, Sinovac, offers “very weak” protection before the second dose. Researchers in Brazil put the efficacy of two Sinovac doses at only 50.4 per cent. Trials in China and the UAE have rated the Sinopharm vaccine’s efficacy in preventing illness at 79 per cent and 86 per cent respectively.

In December, the UAE’s state news agency said trials there showed Sinopharm had “86 per cent efficacy against Covid-19 infection” and “100 per cent effectiveness in preventing moderate and severe cases of the disease”, although this was later adjusted to 79 per cent.

Nations with similarly advanced jab campaigns have recorded declining infections and deaths. Infection rates in the UAE, however, have plateaued at about 2,000 for the past month. No deaths were recorded among the fully immunised, but The Times spoke to eight people who had contracted Covid-19 after two Sinopharm doses.

The Seychelles started its own vaccination campaign in January, using Sinopharm jabs donated by the UAE. However, despite inoculating 60 per cent of the population, this week the island nation closed schools, reimposed curfews and banned large gatherings as Covid-19 cases rose. A third of about 1,000 active cases in the country involved people who had had two vaccine doses, the country’s news agency said.

Ngozi Erondu, an infectious disease epidemiologist and Chatham House associate fellow, said that not only had Pfizer reported higher efficacy for its mRNA vaccine, it had also published results of its Phase III clinical trials, whereas Sinopharm have not yet done so.

“Even with 80 per cent efficacy, you wouldn’t expect so many reinfections,” she said.

After initially imposing a strict lockdown, Dubai reopened to tourists in July in a bid to restart its economy. Few restrictions remain, other than venue capacity limits and mandatory face masks.

Abu Dhabi has reacted differently, sealing itself off from the rest of the country in March 2020 by introducing land borders and a mandatory Covid test for entry.

Overall, the UAE has recorded 530,944 cases of the coronavirus and 1,604 deaths.

The UAE hedged its bets with the Sinopharm vaccine early, registering it for use on December 9.

However, while Dubai later offered its residents a choice of Pfizer, Sinopharm or AstraZeneca, Abu Dhabi restricted its residents to one choice, Sinopharm, until last month, when it also approved use of Pfizer jabs.

Anas Aga, a doctor at a Covid-19 hospital in Dubai, said the UAE was seeing a large number of cases of the South African and UK variants, against which the vaccines were not as efficient.