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The AstraZeneca and Sinopharm vaccines have similar efficacy: they're about 80% effective at preventing symptoms. They're even more effective at preventing ser
by DiogenesKynikos 5y ago
The AstraZeneca and Sinopharm vaccines have similar efficacy:
they're about 80% effective at preventing symptoms. They're even more effective at preventing serious illness and death.
The Seychelles is still 40% unvaccinated. Even people who are vaccinated have some chance of getting infected, though if they get infected, their chance of showing symptoms is lower, and their chance of ending up in the hospital is much lower. It looks like the people testing positive in the Seychelles are mostly unvaccinated, and that the people ending up in the hospital are even more likely to be unvaccinated. But there's not enough information in the BBC article to judge just how effective the vaccines have been in the Seychelles.
The BBC article does contain one falsehood:
> In April, China's top disease control official said the efficacy of the country's Covid vaccines was low, although he later insisted his comments had been misinterpreted.
George Gao did not say this. He gave a talk at a conference on vaccines which was blatantly misconstrued by a "researcher" at an American think tank, the Council on Foreign Relations. That misrepresentation then got spread by the media. All George Gao actually said was that researchers should consider ways of increasing the efficacy of vaccines that have lower efficacy. He didn't name any specific vaccine or any specific country. He proposed the same sorts of measures that are being considered for other vaccines, such as the AstraZeneca shot: delaying the second dose, mixing vaccine doses, etc. This got twisted into an "admission" that Chinese vaccines have low efficacy. It's too bad to see that the BBC is still repeating this false claim, weeks later.
- cetiniz 5y agoIt would be easier believing you if you didn't spend all your time on this site defending China...
- aeyes 5y agoJust have a look at the (non China) data from a real world Sinovac vaccination campaign yourself: https://www.minsal.cl/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Effectiveness-of-the-inactivated-CoronaVac-vaccine-against-SARS-CoV-2-in-Chile.pdf https://www.minsal.cl/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Effectivene... I see 67% effectiveness of preventing symptomatic cases for Sinovac. I'm not sure where the 80% comes from, they could be talking about AstraZeneca.
- DiogenesKynikos 5y agoThe Seychelles has been using a Sinopharm vaccine, not the Sinovac one. They're similar vaccines, but there could be slight differences. The WHO just approved a Sinopharm vaccine (called "BIBP"), and has stated,[1] > A large multi-country Phase 3 trial has shown that 2 doses, administered at an interval of 21 days, have an efficacy of 79% against symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection 14 or more days after the second dose. There are two different Sinopharm vaccines, but I think that BIBP is the one being used in the Seychelles. And yes, as you note, the Phase III studies were conducted outside of China. In order to conduct a Phase III study, there has to be community transmission of the virus, meaning that Phase III trials are impossible in China right now. You would get the same result for the vaccine and placebo arms of the trial: no infections. 1. https://www.who.int/news-room/feature-stories/detail/the-sinopharm-covid-19-vaccine-what-you-need-to-know https://www.who.int/news-room/feature-stories/detail/the-sin...
- TedPetrou 5y agoSeychelles has vaccinated 68.5k of its 98.5k population. [Around 25% of its total population](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Seychelles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Seychelles) are 0-17, so maybe 75k max 18+. Over 90% of adults are vaccinated and less than 7k remain unvaccinated. Seychelles just reported 1800 cases for the last week or 1.8% of its total population. This equates to 6 million cases in the US or more than 800k per day, a number never approached. > It looks like the people testing positive in the Seychelles are mostly unvaccinated It stated that 1/3 were in fully vaccinated and the rest were in partially vaccinated or unvaccinated. There are now 60k that are fully vaccinated, leaving just 8.5k first-dose only. The article was written before the 1800 cases dropped a couple days ago. More data is needed for hospitalizations and deaths, but as it stands now, it does not look convincing for the vaccine. It's likely more cases will continue to come over the next few weeks, even more than the record breaking prior week. Seychelles and other island nations that had no major covid outbreaks before vaccine launch (only 500 cases prior and 7.5k since) are the best real life settings we have for vaccine efficacy. For much of the rest of the world, a huge number of people were already infected before vaccine launch, making it difficult to separate out the effectiveness of the vaccine.
- DiogenesKynikos 5y agoUnless you calculate an actual efficacy, the above numbers are not very informative. What efficacy is implied by the numbers?