CHINA / SOCIETY
Inoculated COVID-19 case likely exposed to British variant: latest Chinese CDC report
Published: Apr 21, 2021 06:22 PM
photo: Xinhua

photo: Xinhua


The COVID-19 patient in Northwest China's Shaanxi Province, a local medical worker who had been inoculated before testing positive on March 17, was likely exposed to a COVID-19 variant first reported in the UK, according to the latest report by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (Chinese CDC).

The patient's exposure likely occurred five days before the onset of their illness, when she obtained nasopharyngeal and oropharyngeal swabs from two imported cases that were identified as belonging to the B.1.1.7 lineage, "the variant first detected in the United Kingdom," said the investigation report published on the English-language website China CDC Weekly on Tuesday.

The person was therefore "likely infected on March 12 when she obtained throat swabs from the two imported cases" based on the epidemiological investigation, the report said.

The investigation's findings caused anxiety among some Chinese people, who worry that COVID-19 vaccines may be unable to protect them from possible overseas virus variants after China eases its travel ban on foreigners in the future.

However, there is no need to be anxious about the effectiveness of vaccines on such variants, insiders told the Global Times. "It is scientifically possible that the vaccine's effectiveness against variants is lower than against non-mutant strains, but it's unlikely to be completely ineffective," said Tao Lina, a Shanghai-based medical expert on vaccines.

There are also solutions to infections resulting from variants, Tao noted. "Possible choices include enhancing personal immunity and antibody levels, or getting another dose to target the variants," he told the Global Times on Wednesday.

The medical worker was inoculated with two doses of inactivated COVID-19 vaccine developed by the Beijing Institute of Biological Products under Sinopharm on December 30, 2020 and January 20, 2021, said the report. The institute announced at the end of 2020 that the inactivated vaccine it developed produced an efficacy rate of 79.34 percent.

The mRNA vaccine tends to show higher effectiveness than the inactivated one, due to the different techniques they use, but no vaccine can vow "absolute safety from infection," Tao noted.

The Tuesday report also mentioned that COVID-19 vaccines have been globally demonstrated to prevent severe symptoms. In terms of the Chinese medical worker's case, "although it is not possible to prove by a single case study, the clinical course of the patient is consistent with the benefits of receiving a COVID-19 vaccine; it makes any illness mild and short in nature," said the reported.

"The COVID-19 vaccines in use in China have very good efficacy, all meeting or exceeding the WHO Target Product Profile's efficacy requirements," it remarked. "Breakthrough infections happen with all vaccines, and these breakthroughs merit studies."