Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, testifies to the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies on President Biden’s Fiscal Year 2023 Budget Request for the National Institute Listening to discuss. Health on Capitol Hill in Washington, May 17, 2022.
Anna Rose Leyden | pool | reuters
Top US infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci criticized China’s COVID lockdown as “draconian” and said the Beijing government should focus on vaccinating the elderly.
“Vaccination of the elderly is not well done and the vaccines they do get are not particularly effective vaccines,” Fauci told the Washington Post in an interview on Thursday. and Infectious Diseases later this month.
Fauci said the lockdown is only justified as a temporary measure to meet a larger public health goal that will make society safer when it reopens. But there seems to be no end in sight to China’s strict Covid controls, he said.
“If there was any advice, it’s very simple and it’s not just coming from me — it’s coming from any number of people involved in this outbreak: vaccinate your people and promote them with a highly effective vaccine.” Do whatever you can to do that,” said Fauci, who has decades of experience responding to infectious diseases, from the HIV epidemic to the emergence of Ebola.
Rare protests took place across China over the weekend against the COVID lockdown and strict quarantine procedures. While most of the world is relying on vaccines to prevent severe disease so that society can return to normal despite the virus’s ongoing spread, China has implemented a zero COVID policy that aims to crush outbreaks.
China uses a domestically developed vaccine called CoronaVac, manufactured by Sinovac. The shots contain killed viruses that produce an immune response. Beijing has not approved the messenger RNA vaccine of Pfizer and Moderna.
“The efficacy of China-made vaccines is not at the level of vaccines used in the United States, particularly the mRNA vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer,” Fauci said.
A man walks past a poster encouraging elderly people to get vaccinated against the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) near a residential compound in Beijing, China March 30, 2022. Image taken on March 30, 2022.
Tingshu Wang | Reuters
According to the World Health Organization, data on the effectiveness of Sinovac-CoronaVac against the Omicron variant is limited. Omicron has rapidly evolved into an immune-evasive subvariant that has reduced the effectiveness of all Covid vaccines.
hong kong scientist In a study published in The Lancet Infectious Diseasesfound that two doses of CoronaVac were about 58% effective at preventing serious illness or death in people 80 years of age and older during an Omicron BA.2 wave from December 2021 to March 2022. Two doses of Pfizer’s vaccine were 87% effective in preventing severe disease. illness or death in this age group, according to the study.
People 80 and older who took three doses of CoronaVac were found to have 97% protection against serious illness and death. According to the study, this was equivalent to the 97% protection provided by Pfizer’s three doses.
The Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention said in a September report that vaccination rates for older adults in China are lower than in other countries because the elderly are skeptical about the country’s domestically developed vaccine.
According to the report, not enough adults over the age of 60 were enrolled in clinical trials for China’s vaccine, so there is insufficient data on its safety and effectiveness in this age group.
The vaccination campaign in China began with people in essential positions, followed by adults aged 18 to 59, and later opened only to older adults.
Chinese officials said about this on Tuesday 66% of adults over age 80 have received a booster shotUp 40% as of Nov 11.