Will Australia accept Sinovac and Sinopharm?

Australian businesswoman Hannah has booked in for her second dose of the COVID-19 jab this week — but she is not getting one of the vaccines approved for use in Australia.

Instead, she will be immunised with China’s Sinovac vaccine.

Chinese-made vaccines have only been available to foreigners for the past month, and Hannah booked her first vaccination shot though an app.

She described a smooth process at Tongren Hospital in Shanghai, where 140 people are seen every 30 minutes.

“The entire process took 10 minutes, from start to finish,” she said, adding she was asked to sit for half an hour of observation. I think people are quite surprised … from what they’ve said about trying to get it in Australia, it’s much harder to get it at home than it has been for me to get it here.”

Hannah, who did not want to provide her surname, runs a business that imports boutique Australian spirit brands into China.

She said she had mild after-effects, such as a sore arm, tiredness and nausea for a few days after the shot, which cost her about $20. But there’s uncertainty over whether her Sinovac jab will be recognised in Australia.

“The fact that Australia might not recognise the Sinovac vaccine, and you know, still requires quarantine. I mean, the politics around this are just getting out of control,” she said.

She added, there’s a strong probability she is going to end up with double vaccines. And that she would seek health professional advice on.

It’s not just an issue for Chinese-made vaccines — other jabs being deployed internationally, such as the Moderna vaccine, Johnson & Johnson’s jab, and Russia’s Sputnik V, have yet to be cleared for use in Australia.

And for Australians and other foreign nationals living in China, getting the Pfizer or AstraZeneca vaccine isn’t possible at the moment, as China hasn’t approved any foreign vaccines.

WHO to review two Chinese vaccines 

In Australia, the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) has only approved two vaccines — Pfizer and AstraZeneca. However, two Chinese vaccines are set to be reviewed by the World Health Organization (WHO).

Their stamp of approval could be a game changer, according to epidemiologist and advisor to the WHO Mary-Louise McLaws.

Technical experts at the WHO are due to review Sinopharm’s jab this week for a possible emergency use listing, with Sinovac due to be reviewed on May 3.

A decision is expected a few days later. Sinopharm has been reported to have a 79 per cent efficacy rate, while results from Sinovac have ranged from 50.4 per cent to 83.5 per cent.

The WHO guidelines require vaccines to have a 50 per cent efficacy rate. Recent updates from Pfizer and AstraZeneca suggest efficacy rates of 91.3 per cent and 76 per cent respectively.

The director of the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, Gao Fu, was quoted this month as saying Chinese vaccines “don’t have very high protection rates” and the country was considering mixing them to give them a boost.

But Professor McLaws said much of the scepticism about China’s vaccines, which stems from a lack of peer-reviewed data, was without basis and even amounted to “scientific racism”.