Among the countries that vaccinated the most, the five with the most deaths from COVID-19 use Chinese vaccines

Gao Fu, director of the China Centers for Disease Control, had admitted it in April: the vaccines developed by the Asian country “do not have very high protection rates”. Then he backtracked and tried to reinterpret his statement by saying that he was actually referring to all the vaccines that are being applied world. But clearly he was referring to the formulas of his country.

“Now it is officially considered whether we should use different vaccines, from different technical lines, for the immunization process”Gao had said in his initial press conference, suggesting the possibility of increasing protection by combining his preparations with those developed in other countries. In fact, he clarified: “Everyone must consider the benefits that messenger RNA vaccines can bring to humanity”, which is the one used by Pfizer / BioNTech and Moderna.

It’s not that Chinese vaccines don’t work. There is a lot of evidence that they reduce the risk of suffering severe COVID-19 pictures, which can end in hospitalizations and deaths. However, a review of how the populations of countries with more advanced immunization campaigns are reacting reveals that they are less effective than others, such as those of Pfizer / BioNTech and Moderna, or that of AstraZeneca.

The comparison between the countries that vaccinated the most

There are already 37 countries in which half the population received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. Ordered from highest to lowest percentage of coverage, they are: Malta (83.45%), Iceland (77.61%), United Arab Emirates (75.2%), Seychelles (72.7%), Canada (69.27 %), Nauru (69.22%), Chile (68.3%), Uruguay (67.73%), United Kingdom (67.32%), San Marino (66.25%), Israel (66.12 %), Singapore (65.69%), Holland (65.26%), Belgium (64.91%), Mongolia (64.09%), Qatar (64.04%), Bahrain (63.62%) , Bhutan (62.83%), Finland (62.09%), Denmark (61.9%), Spain (58.89%), Maldives (58.86%), Portugal (58.39%), Luxembourg (58.38%), Germany (57.79%), Italy (57.78%), Hungary (57.18%), Norway (55.84%), Ireland (55.44%), Austria (55 , 29%), United States (54.88%), Sweden (54.7%), Andorra (53.99%), Cyprus (53.47%), France (52.31%), Liechtenstein (52, 2%) and Switzerland (52.06%).

This level of protection allows an estimate of the effect of the different vaccines to combat COVID-19. On average, these 37 countries have 161 daily cases per million inhabitants and 0.74 daily deaths per million. For a measure of comparison, at the worst moment of the pandemic, Europe averaged 383 cases and 7.37 deaths per day.

These reveal something significant: the decrease is much more evident in deaths than in infections. This can be seen in the different graphics that accompany this note. The first distributes to the 37 selected nations according to the percentage of immunization and the average number of daily cases per million people. The first thing that stands out is that 13 countries, that is, approximately one third, are registering more than 100 daily infections per million, a high number.

Above 1,000 there is only one, which is Seychelles, with 1,194. It is one of those mainly used by one of the Chinese formulas, that of Sinopharm, a state-owned company, the Chinese National Pharmaceutical Group Corporation. But very close, with 901 infections every 24 hours, is Cyprus, which inoculated mostly with Pfizer / BioNTech. Third, with 607 cases, is Mongolia, which also used Sinopharm. Fourth, with 429, is the United Kingdom, which used AstraZeneca and Pfizer / BioNTech almost in the same proportion. Fifth, with 315, is Spain, which vaccinated essentially with Pfizer / BioNTech.

So that when analyzing infections, there do not seem to be big differences between the different vaccines. But the panorama is different when it is investigated in the daily deaths, which is what the second graph shows. Unlike the first, where several countries are seen in the middle of the table, 32 of the 37 are tight down, with less than one daily death per million inhabitants. It is the strongest evidence of how important vaccines are to saving lives.

What also allows visualizing this graph is that the five nations that are above one death used primarily Chinese vaccines. Those with the highest mortality at this time are Chile, with 6.18 deaths, and Uruguay, with 6.09. Both applied the vaccine from Sinovac Biotech, a private Chinese laboratory, more than anyone else. The other three injected mainly Sinopharm: Seychelles, which registers 4.36 deaths; Mongolia, with 2.96; and Bahrain, with 1.51.

Both Sinovac and Sinopharm use inactivated viruses to provoke an immune response in the patient, a method widely used in vaccines.. Both were approved by the World Health Organization, which reports that in trials conducted in Brazil, Sinovac was approximately 50% effective against symptomatic COVID-19 and 100% effective against severe conditions, while the efficacy of Sinopharm was estimated 79% in both areas.

The truth is that those numbers come from tests. But the mass vaccination revealed other things. The case of Chile is very interesting. Although infections fell from the peak of 382 in mid-April to 147 this week, there was the paradox that deaths increased. In January, when vaccination had not yet started, the average was 2.39. Now it is 6.18.

The Chilean Ministry of Health presented on April 16 a study on the effectiveness of the Sinovac vaccine that revealed that with a single dose the protection is only 3% against contagion, but that 14 days after the second dose is applied it rises to 67 percent. However, the effectiveness in preventing death is not 100%, but 80%. That means that getting the vaccine significantly reduces the risk of dying, but there are 20% of people vaccinated with the two doses that can end up losing their lives.

These are very different numbers than those recorded in the countries that used Pfizer / BioNTech. Anthony Fauci, America’s leading infectious disease expert, revealed that of the more than 9,000 people who died from COVID-19 in June, only 0.8% were fully vaccinated.. Israel reported that the effectiveness in May of that formula had been 98.2% in avoiding hospitalizations.

This difference in the margin of protection is clearly seen in Uruguay, where it is true that infections fell a lot after having reached a peak of 1,113 in May, to 184 this week. But deaths, which are also falling (from 17.5 to 6.09), remain well above before the start of mass inoculation., when they oscillated between one and two.

The Sinopharm vaccine appears to be slightly more effective than the Sinovac vaccine, but the worst-affected countries that used it also show less promising data than those that used other formulas. Seychelles, for example, where 72.7% of the population is already vaccinated with one dose, has more deaths and cases than before the start of mass vaccination. The same is seen in Mongolia, where cases went from 12 in March to more than 600 today, and deaths from zero to 2.96.

The one that shows the best figures of the five is Bahrain, where after a maximum of 1,748 cases and 14 deaths it went to 63 and 1.51. It’s almost the same level it was at at the beginning of the year.

What can be seen in the three European countries that are among those with the most infections at this time – within the group of the 37 that vaccinated the most, of course – is a strong regrowth in recent weeks, mainly attributed to the advance of the Delta variant, which has not resulted in a comparable increase in deaths.

In Cyprus, cases went from 58 in June to 901 this week, but deaths went from zero to 0.96, when in January, with fewer cases – and without vaccines – they were at 4.02. In the UK, infections have risen from 30 in May to 429 now, but deaths barely grew from 0.16 to 0.38, when at the worst they had reached 18.46. In Spain, where the spike in infections is more recent – from 69 in June to 315 now – the decline in mortality did not stop, which closed the week at 0.28, far from 10 a day in February.

The data from Israel allow us to understand that cases have increased in these countries but deaths have remained practically stable. According to data collected by the government, the effectiveness of the Pfizer / BioNTech formula dropped 30 percentage points between May and June in preventing symptomatic cases —That is, before and after Delta becomes dominant—: it went from 94.3% to 64%, which means that many vaccinated people who were not infected before are now infected. Nevertheless, efficacy in preventing hospitalizations fell just five points in the period: from 98.2 to 93 percent.

KEEP READING: