A top health official in China has gone ahead and taken COVID-19 vaccine booster dose. The top disease control official says he has had a third Covid-19 shot, while the global debate continues on the need for extra doses to boost immunity and protect against new variants.
Scientists across the globe continue to debate on the need for a third booster jab against Covid-19 and whether the shots can be mixed, China’s top disease control official said he has taken three different shots against the infectious disease, the media reported.
In China and in many parts of Asia Chinese vaccines have played a crucial role in immunising people against Covid-19, with millions receiving either a Sinovac or Sinopharm jab.
Top Health Official of China takes 3 different Covid vaccines
China has distributed hundreds of millions of doses of domestically made vaccines abroad and is relying on them for its own mass immunization campaign.
“I was among the first to have a domestically developed Covid-19 vaccine when I got the shot in May last year,” Gao was quoted as saying. “I have now had three shots that used different technology and were from different manufacturers and I haven’t felt any discomfort.”
China’s top disease control official has said the country is formally considering mixing COVID-19 vaccines as a way of further boosting vaccine efficacy.
“I was among the first to have a domestically developed Covid-19 vaccine when I got the shot in May last year,” the South China Morning Post quoted Gao Fu, head of the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, as saying to state-run magazine Global People.
“I have now had three shots that used different technology and were from different manufacturers and I haven’t felt any discomfort,” Fu added.
However, the report did not say why Fu took the third jab, and whether it was part of a study.
In April, Fu had called for research into mixing vaccines to try to “resolve the issue that current vaccines don’t have very high protection rates”
Available data shows Chinese vaccines lag behind others including Pfizer (PFE.N) and Moderna (MRNA.O) in terms of efficacy, but require less stringent temperature controls during storage.
Giving people doses of different vaccines is one way to improve vaccines that “don’t have very high rates of protection”, Gao Fu, the director of the Chinese Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said on Saturday, without specifying whether he was referring to foreign or domestic vaccines.
There are also no reports yet of breakthrough infections in China, where more than 630 million have taken at least one shot of a Chinese vaccine. It is not known how many of them are fully vaccinated.
