By Kayce Brown
Recently the thin-skinned Chinese establishment and their supporters in Sierra Leone were offended by a write-up circulated on social media which questioned the safety and efficacy of Chinese made vaccines.
Some Sierra Leoneans, supposedly supporters of the Chinese embassy in Freetown, even mounted a campaign against the faceless author of the piece which was shared via whatsapp and facebook. One pro-Chinese journalist even called for the arrest of the author.
A senior communications official at State House, who bears the same name of the supposed author of the provocative piece, came out with a statement distancing himself from it. Joseph Margai, the Head of Strategic Communications at State House, explained how he had benefitted from China so much that he couldn’t possibly be part of what he called a scheme to destroy the bilateral relationship between China and Sierra Leone.
A few days after that incident, news about a crackdown on fake vaccine by Chinese authorities surfaced on social media. That is the basis of the skepticism surrounding the Chinese made vaccine not just in Sierra Leone but all over the world.
I don’t know of any other country where they have reported incidents of fake Covid-19 vaccine unconnected to China.
The international police agency, INTERPOL, at the beginning of this month reported that 400 vials, equivalent to about 2,400 doses, containing fake vaccines, were found at a warehouse in Germiston outside Johannesburg in South Africa, where officers also recovered fake masks and arrested three Chinese citizens and a Zambian national, according to a March 3 release.
In China itself police successfully identified a network selling counterfeit COVID-19 vaccines, raided the manufacturing premises, resulting in the arrest of some 80 suspects, and seized more than 3,000 fake vaccines on the scene, according to the INTERPOL.
The international police organization in an earlier “Orange Notice” released warned authorities worldwide to prepare for organised crime networks targeting COVID-19 vaccines, both physically and online.
“Whilst we welcome this result, this is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to COVID-19 vaccine-related crime,” Interpol Secretary-General Juergen Stock said in the statement on the South African discovery.
The agency said it also received additional reports of fake vaccine distribution at nursing homes.
Earlier in February, the BBC reported that the Chines Government had arrested the leader of a multi-million dollar scam that passed off saline solution and mineral water as Covid-19 vaccines.
The suspect reportedly researched the packaging designs of real vaccines before making more than 58,000 of his own concoctions. The report noted that a batch of the vaccines were smuggled overseas, although it wasn’t known where they were. They could be anywhere.
With the weakness of our drug administration system in this country, this is surely a major concern.
Given a situation like this, it should surely be understandable why people will be skeptical.
It is normal for people to be unhappy when their work is questioned. But the level of intolerance of the Chinese to criticism is baffling. Yet this is a life and death issue.
The debate about vaccine safety and efficacy is as old as the science pf vaccine itself. We have dealt with it throughout the last six decades of the fight against Polio. We saw it during the 2014-2016 West African Ebola epidemic. And it is bound to continue.
Firstly, there is no vaccine that is 100 percent safe. That is why so far all the approved Covid-19 vaccines have different rates of safety, as have been published on renowned publications.
But the process of development and the scientific approach can provide an indication of the likely safety of a vaccine.
Sinopharm is actually a Chinese state-owned company which is developing two Covid-19 vaccine candidates – inactivated vaccines. It is unclear which one of the two was sent to Sierra Leone. These two are part of about five candidate vaccines for Covid-19 on development in China.
None of the Chinese vaccine candidates has got WHO emergency use clearance. Sinopharm announced on 30 December that phase three trials of one of its vaccines showed that it was 79% effective – lower than that of Pfizer and Moderna.
However, according to another BBC report, the United Arab Emirates, one of the first countries to approve a Sinopharm vaccine, said it was 86% effective, according to interim results of its phase three trial.
Besides the questions raised by this discrepancies, ahead of the phase three trial results by the Chinese themselves, the vaccine had already been distributed to nearly a million people in China under an emergency programme.
The BBC quoted Professor Dale Fisher of the National University of Singapore saying that it was “unconventional” to ramp up a vaccine programme without first going through last stage trials.
Earlier in December, Peru suspended trials for the Sinopharm vaccine due to a “serious adverse event” affecting a volunteer. It later said that it lifted the suspension, the BBC report added.
These revelations should call for concern for anyone who cares about the health and safety of their population. These are the issues we should be discussing about the Chinese vaccines, instead of plotting how to destroy people because of their expression of concerns over safety of the vaccines.
Granted, the Chinese ambassador in Freetown, Hu Zhangliang, has been cited in various reports assuring of the safety of the vaccine. This is all well and good. But the people will need more than just a statement of assurance. We need demonstration of examples.
It will make a great deal of difference in terms of raising public confidence level in the vaccine and the upcoming vaccination exercise in general if top and influential public and private officials take the lead in publicly taking the jabs. These officials and celebrities must include the president, his vice president and the China ambassador himself. Imagine the three together, taking the vaccines in public!
And charity, they say, begins at home.
It will also help if any other official, especially elected officials of the Sierra Leone Government, take the jab publicly. And it will be even helpful if all of these pacesetters take the Chinese jab. Yes, the Chinese jab, not the AstraZeneca-Oxford COVID-19 vaccine. The Chinese jab is where the doubt is.
If you want the people to believe and be assured that the Chinese vaccine is safe, this is the best you can do to convince them.