Covid-19: China not for mass vaccination programme due to ADE risk, says report

The director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Gao Fu, said at a Covid-19 vaccine summit that China will not vaccinate the entire population, only frontline workers will get vaccine shots, as per a Global Times report.

According to Gao, China has resisted the first wave of the virus that burgeoned in Wuhan last year. He added that factors such as potential side effects and costs should be kept in mind before balancing the risks and benefits of the vaccine.

He thinks that there is no need to run a mass vaccination programme at this stage. High-risk populations and frontline workers are to be prioritised.

Gao, however, said that the decision can be changed if another outbreak erupts in the country.

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Gao stated that it is proven that China has “several magic weapons to respond to the epidemic.”

Priority list

China’s priority list includes medical workers, Chinese nationals working overseas in virus hotspots, and people working in dense, high-risk environments like restaurants, schools, or cleaning services.

The decision comes as the administration believes that there is a risk of poor side effects because there has not been any vaccine developed against Covid-19 so far.

According to the Global Times report, Gao said that the vaccine may induce ADE (antibody-dependent enhancement) effects.

Antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE) is a phenomenon in which the binding of a virus to suboptimal antibodies enhances its entry into host cells. This furthers pathogens’ replication.