Covid-19: Chinese vaccines may need changes to improve efficacy, admits official

China may need to replace its coronavirus vaccines or change the way they are administered in order to make them sufficiently effective against the SARS-Cov2 virus, the head of China’s Centre for Disease Prevention and Control said this weekend. “We will solve the problem that current vaccines don’t have very high protection rates,” said George Gao, director general of the Chinese CDC, on 11 April at a Chengdu conference on covid-19 vaccines. “It’s now under consideration whether we should use different vaccines from different technical lines for immunisation.” Existing vaccines might see changes in dosage, dosing interval, or number of doses, said Gao, or their administration might be mixed with vaccines based on different technologies. “Everyone should consider the benefits mRNA vaccine technology can bring for humanity,” said Gao. “We must follow it carefully and not ignore it just because we already have several types of vaccines already.” Gao’s comments were …