China's shocking Covid vaccine race desperation exposed: Mass injections, little choice

As the catastrophic Coronavirus pandemic has taken a toll on the world with health infrastructure and economies crumbling, many nations across the world are struggling to come up with potential vaccines for the virus. However, China, in a bid to desperately be the one to win this race, is injecting unproven vaccines to its citizens before requisite regulatory approvals. The vaccine candidates which are still in development stages are being injected to citizens at a mass scale, from government and state-owned companies' employees to supermarket workers, teachers, transportation workers and even vaccine staff, reports state.

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The Chinese authorities are making plans to give vaccine shots at an even larger scale in a big gamble that the vaccines will eventually be proven to be efficacious, the New York Times reported. This is relevant since being the first to have a proven vaccine and manufacturing it at scale is likely to prove internationally lucrative, something that is evidenced by Russia's similar rush and subsequent criticism of the Sputnik V vaccine. 

The vaccines could well be life-threatening or with harmful side effects, but the employees may not even have the option to refuse the doses, Dr Kim Mulholland, a paediatrician at the Murdoch Children's Research Institute in Australia opined. "My worry for the employees of the companies is it may be difficult for them to refuse," Mulholland was quoted as saying.

Non-disclosure agreement

As the mass population is getting injected on a large scale with the unproven vaccine, it is being said that the people are being injected without any choice. It is also reported that employers and companies have asked their employees to sign a non-disclosure agreement before taking the vaccine shot to prevent them from revealing anything in the media.

"It is not clear how many people in China have received coronavirus vaccines. Sinopharm, a Chinese state-owned company with a vaccine candidate in late-stage trials, has said hundreds of thousands of people have received its shots. Sinovac, a Beijing-based company, said over 10,000 people in Beijing had been injected with its vaccine. Separately, it said nearly all its employees -- around 3,000 in total -- and their families had taken it," the report said.  

Jerome Kim, head of the International Vaccine Institute, said that the vaccine could have negative consequences. He opined that the people who took the vaccine could be infected and yet not know it. Or the asymptomatic people could be the carriers of the virus even if the vaccine partially worked, but they may not know it and could be a threat to others, Kim opined.

While there are serious concerns over China's forceful vaccination, a health official named Zheng told China Central Television that the Chinese government might consider expanding the scope in the winter season over who should be injected the unproven vaccine for emergency use, adding people who work in markets, transportation and the service industry.

(With ANI inputs)

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