How Effective Is Sinovac? Inactivated Virus VS mRNA Vaccine | Talking Point | COVID-19
81 percent of singapore's population have received the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine jade limb is receiving hers today but unlike most who have taken the pfizer-biontec or modern vaccine jane has chosen the china made sinovac she's not the only one since authorities announced that sinovac would be made available under the special access route long queues have formed across the island at private clinics offering the vaccine over 80 000 people in singapore have received at least first dose of sinovac then came this announcement from 10th august 2021 we will take a more inclusive approach in recognizing vaccines beyond the two mrna vaccines we will extend safe management and in time travel concessions to individuals who have received these recognized vaccines this means people like jade who have taken the sinovac will now be included in singapore's vaccine count but here's the thing although you are counted as fully vaccinated if you take sinovac the vaccine is still not part of the national vaccination program so this means two things one you'll have to pay for it about 10 to 25 singapore dollars per dose for the vaccine administrative fee and two you won't be covered under the vaccine injury financial assistance program should there be any adverse reactions to the vaccine so why then are there still so many people clamoring for it in this episode of talking point i find out why there is this pent-up demand for the sinovac vaccine and tell you everything you need to know about it for a start i did a call out on instagram and i'm gonna be meeting some experts if you have questions for them do let me know and i will try to get your questions answered some of the things you wanted to know included sinovac effectiveness side effects and also why are people opting for it and so to find out why some would choose sinovac i will be following 32 year old veterinarian jade on her side of vaccination journey jade chose sinovac even though she has no known allergies to the pfizer biotech and modern vaccines you had to wait months to take the sinovac vaccine why were you so adamant about wanting that vaccine personally i do feel more comfortable with the way traditional vaccines are made using an inactivated virus i feel safer because it has been shown and tested and proven that it's effective mrna function a bit different compared to inactivated virus so there's a larger response in terms of immune system reaction compared to inactivated as a healthy person with a good immune system i felt that's not necessary to take something that triggers so much reaction in the body is it largely the side effects in a way that you were worried about yes and also long term like what happens in like 50 years later we wouldn't know whereas inactivated virus have been used for decades and what did your friends your family say when you told them about your decision everyone was shocked when they first heard that i was going to take sinovac like oh my god why sinovac uses an inactivated virus technology this means that you are injected with dead virus particles triggering the body's immune system to produce antibodies against COVID-19. mrna vaccines such as pfizer biontec and moderna on the other hand involves injecting snippets of the COVID-19 genetic code into a patient put simply it's a recipe to direct the production of a specific part of the virus the spike protein to trigger an immune response without actually exposing the patient to the virus mrna technology only started human trials in 2009 compared to inactivated viruses which was first introduced at the end of the 19th century and has since been used to treat ailments such as typhoid polio and even the common flu leading some to believe that this is a tried and tested technology and therefore much safer i'm feeling pretty refreshed and no signs of discomfort around my body i went back to work and everything went on as per usual the only thing i experienced was the aching sensation on the injection site throughout the day jade believes sinovac to be a tried and tested safer vaccine i want to know if that's really true to help me break it down is dr lau jashin he is an infectious disease specialist and has a special interest in vaccinology so essentially how is sinovac vaccine different from the mrna technology so the sinovac vaccine presents to the body the complete but inactivated covariate virus it's like an entire house okay it's all its component the garage the front door the porch the chimneys the front yard everything right so that would present to the immune system many many different parts of the virus but energy vaccine is very pure it creates just the spike protein for the body to react against from sars one we learned that the spike protein is the target of interest in creating a vaccine and when you create immunity against the spike protein it has a very high capability to neutralize subsequent challenges with covet virus so in a way a sign of that if we are presenting the enemy to our body but we're not sure within this group exactly who is the enemy versus saying look guys shoot this guy yes exactly some people feel that the sinovac vaccine is safer than the mrna technology vaccines is that true well it's not exactly true the mrna vaccine has been used millions of doses around the world the amount of data that has come back has been rigorous robust and the whole data has been examined with a microscope however on the other side the sinovac safety data is not as open and not as publicly available so we actually do not know what is in this gray box as far as efficacy is concerned dr lowe says sinovac has an efficacy rate of 51 percent compared to pfizer biontech 95 and moderna 94 so can i interpret that i am more protected if the efficacy rate is higher yes yeah more protected if the efficacy rate is higher so people who have gotten covid will have antibodies right if you want to give a vaccine you should generate antibody at least better or more than somebody who have caught the infection so the sinovac vaccine in its early trial is shown that the antibody generated by the sinovac vaccine was actually lower than that generated by people who have gotten coveted to really know more about sinovac i need to go to where it's been used for much longer hong kong but i'm not really flying there i'm getting help from my colleague cna correspondent wei du she's been tracking the vaccination rollout in hong kong and tells me sinovac has been offered there since february this year hey we do you know there's been quite a huge demand for sign of that in singapore it hasn't actually been the same in hong kong yeah it's difficult to make that comparison there are only two hundred thousand shots of satellite vaccines that are available in singapore here in hong kong it's been freely available to anyone who wants it since february so no need to queue up overnight and no need to uh to to make a mad dash for it as of mid july 1.5 million people have chosen to receive the buy biontech vaccine here in hong kong as opposed to 1.1 million receiving the son of a vaccine so far why do you think that's the case there's a general sense of distrust against mainland china and anything that comes from mainland china that has to do with our local political development but on top of that people are also very uh clear about the fact that the biontech mra vaccine simply works better a side effect how severe can the side effects get if we uh really specifically talking about sinovac vaccine it seems facial paralysis is one we could find reports of more than 20 cases of people developing facial paralysis that said though that's out of 1.1 million people also we haven't been able to prove that all of them were actually a result of the vaccine is there any discrimination between the kinds of vaccinations whether it's sinovac whether it's biotech doesn't make a difference no no not at all because both vaccines are approved by the government and are provided by the government if you do develop adversity effects that the government payout is also the same and there's already been three cases of people developing facial paralysis after receiving some of that vaccine that's been paid out of the government insurance fund with many countries worldwide hit by the delta variant the effectiveness of covid-19 vaccines has been challenged as their face against more transmissible strains with little data established on sinovac's protection against the delta variant i wonder why hong kong is so confident in the vaccine weidu is helping me get the answers we don't have enough data on how well the sign of that vaccine works against the new variant why are we so confident here in hong kong to help me understand sinovac's efficacy and specifically against a delta variant i've enlisted help from cna's northeast asia correspondent weidu who is based in hong kong the special administration has been using the vaccine for much longer than singapore as of july 13th that close to 1.9 million doses of the sinovac vaccine have been administered here in
hong kong i wonder why are we so confident here in hong kong about the sign of that i'm meeting dr david lam chairman of medical conscience he administers sinovac vaccines at his private clinic hi i'm wei very nice to meet you we don't have enough data how well is sinovac vaccine it works against the new variants why are we so confident here in hong kong i don't think we have so-called sufficient data with respect to the efficacy on variance for any single vaccines all those data are not randomized controlled trial data they are on ground data from real life situations and things just keep changing so if you want to wait until there's one vaccine that have the full sets of data from randomized control trial you'll never get that i understand what you mean it's not that hong kong is so confident that sinovac will work very well it's just we'll never find out until it's too late exactly exactly here in hong kong when you have a choice of a vaccine that's much more efficacious why do you think people should still go with sinovac if you look at the data the efficacy of preventing hospitalization and preventing death is very similar for both vaccines so the efficacious advantage for biontech is not that obvious and the second thing people look at is the side effects profile and it's quite obvious that you have more pains and eggs fever and other kinds of discomforts after the messaging or any type of vaccine so some people thought well why don't we just use something in the mind it's milder less dizziness less pain less fever so some of these people they chose the other one the inactivated virus if sinovac is really effective at preventing the severity of corvette 19 infections why is it starting to look like a different story in indonesia in june there were troubling signs reports started to surface saying that more than 350 medical workers who had been vaccinated with sinovac had contracted covid-19 with symptoms so severe that they needed to be hospitalized to get to the bottom of indonesia's covet situation i've arranged for a call with dr dickie buryman a medical doctor and epidemiologist who is based in australia but currently advising the indonesian government on the containment of covet 19. so there's been a recent explosion over in indonesia in terms of number of cases it started in kudos it went over to java island how did this happen my analysis so far first because it seemed after six months when seeing enough affection effectivity or in protection is decreasing and the second one it seems this enough function again delta variant is less effective compared to let's say messenger and an hour so overall the protection it's offering you you're saying over time becomes less and less yes that's why it's very important to have this boost we just give modern eye oh okay so so they've already received two shots of sinovac vaccine yes you are saying that they should have a third shot and not from sinovac from moderna based on the study we can see that they have strong effectivity again the delta variant and government already got these uh moderna from u.s so there are no concerns that you are mixing the different vaccines yeah it is based on also the current study in the european and german they also mix sound effect and also messenger rna and so far based on this study and preliminary research we don't see any problem with this mixed communication in the face of the contagious delta variant indonesia is not the only southeast asian country seeking extra precautions in thailand when more than 600 sinovac vaccinated medical workers were infected authorities there announced the mixing and matching of vaccines where a first dose of sinovac is given followed by a second dose of the astrazeneca vaccine to achieve a booster effect malaysia is also reviewing data to determine if those who took sinovac should be given a booster shot with another vaccine such as pfizer biontech or astrazeneca as countries pivot their strategy towards the use of sinovac i find out how singapore is planning to move forward with the vaccine we've heard reports of other countries who are needing a booster shot even though they've had two shots of the sinovac vaccine is that something we're looking at happening here in singapore too where the booster shot will be needed just a very good question i've been tracking jade lynn one of the over 80 000 singaporeans who have opted for the sinovac vaccine today she is taking the second dose hello okay you have a seat as of 10th august singapore authorities said approved private healthcare institutions can order more supplies of sinovac as stock would be depleted after covering 85 000 individuals thank you similar to what most of us who took the pfizer biontech or moderna vaccine went through jade is ushered to the waiting room to monitor for any side effects but in this clinic she's told to wait for only 15 minutes instead of the usual 30 minutes so while g is being monitored i'm going to pop in and have a quick chat with dr louis tan he's been a doctor for many years in both the public and private healthcare sector in fact he ran hospitals in china for several years too i want to know if he needed to attend to anyone with adverse side effects following their sinovac jabs across all your clinics here roughly how many people have you give the sinovac vaccine to well today we've done about 1500 vaccinations so from the about thousand five hundred that have been vaccinated by your clinic have you seen any with adverse side effects a small number have complained of pain redness and swelling i think that is not unexpected right one or two have complained of giddiness and one lady has vomited but these are largely quite mild and they were easily addressed within the clinic by and large most patients spend that 15 minutes waiting uneventfully and then they're off have you heard of others who who came back like two days later and said i'm still having a fever no i think part of it is also when we provide the vaccination to patients we do provide some counselling as to some of the common side effects to expect how to manage them which are the serious ones and which and more milder ones that you can cope with at home i think that has helped a lot of patients manage the post vaccination side effects and the 15 minute waiting period why such a short time i mean i had to wait half an hour so the ministry of health provided instructions that we should take guidance from the world health organization's interim guidelines on sinovac and so the WHO actually recommends a 15 minutes observation time post vaccination in terms of side effects how does the side effects from sinovac compared to pfizer and moderna is it any different the nature of the side effects have similarities right the pain redness swelling occasional headache raise temperature but the severity of some of the side effects at least from our anecdotal evidence seems to be milder in that sense in most cases people have a more severe side effect from the second dose can that be expected from the sinovac vaccine as well we've only started administering our second though so we are still observing for more severe side effects so far we haven't seen any i think theoretically because your body is primed after the first dose you will expect a more robust immune response for your second dose whether this translates to side effects that are more severe or not we can't tell i'm feeling really energized today so much better than the first injection yesterday and i did have a mild dull pain on my injected arm and a slight headache but that only lasted for a couple of hours jay might have completed both doses of the vaccine but would she require an mrna booster jab to ensure her sinovac vaccine is effective dr danny soon is a member of the expert committee for covid 19 in singapore he helps to evaluate the safety and efficacy of the vaccines approved for use here cynical vaccine has been given many other countries in fact some of them who have had two shots of the sinovac vaccines are still recommending a third booster shot and an mrna booster shot is that something we're looking at happening here in singapore too where the booster shot will be needed it's a good question some data will be coming forth from overseas studies as well as local but it's still very early to tell whether this would be something that we would that would be effective or that we would actually implement so how long will it take before we are able to evaluate sinovac's effectiveness here in singapore we hope to be able to see some outcome uh sometime in august is it worthwhile taking the sign of vaccines sinovac is given as an option at this point because there may be some people who have a personal preference for it they may be some will not be eligible for the mrna vaccines because of allergies and so it is a small number of people that potentially could be looking for the sinovac vaccine it is better to have some vaccination and no vaccination so vaccinated patients even with sinovac generally do not suffer from severe illness and what should one consider when deciding which vaccine to take so currently under the national vaccination programs you have two highly effective vaccines the messenger rna vaccines i would recommend that for those are considering what vaccines you take those would be your first choices as of 11 august the health sciences authority is still in the midst of reviewing additional data given by sinovac the results will determine if there will be any change to the regulatory approval for the vaccine this means whether or not it will be part of the national vaccination program just like pfizer biontech and moderna vaccines under the program are covered under the vaccine injury financial assistance program which gives a one-time payout for anyone suffering adverse effects as a result of the corvid 19 vaccinations so here's what i've learned about sinovac the vaccine may not necessarily be safer than mrna vaccines and the jury is still out on whether or not it's effective in dealing with new variants but whether you choose sinovac because you want to or because you have no choice due to your allergy to mrna vaccines the main thing to remember is getting vaccinated no matter which vaccine is still better than none at all
2021-08-19 02:54
