SEYCHELLES SUFFERS SPIKE IN COVID CASES AFTER SINOPHARM JABS

Seychelles, the world’s most vaccinated nation, grapples with a huge spike of COVID-19 cases among those vaccinated with Sinopharm jabs, which have been injected into 60% percent of its population of 100,000.

Writing for the New York Times on May 13, 2021, Sui-Lee Wee said “China expected its Sinopharm vaccines to be the linchpin of the country’s vaccine diplomacy program — an easily transported dose that would protect not just Chinese citizens but also much of the developing world.

In a bid to win goodwill, China has donated 13.3 million Sinopharm doses to other countries, according to Bridge Beijing, a consultancy that tracks China’s impact on global health.

Instead, Sinopharm has been condemned for its lack of transparency with its late-stage trial data and now Seychelles suffers from a surge in cases despite much of its population being inoculated with Sinopharm.

For the 56 countries counting on the Sinopharm shot to help them halt the pandemic, the news is a setback, Sui insisted. Seychelles has ordered a lockdown after 37% of the new COVID cases came from those who had completed the two-dose Sinopharm vaccination.

Now, the people of Seychelles want none of the Sinopharm jab but China has blamed the Western media for discrediting Chinese vaccines. Beijing could not explain why COVID-19 has been infecting people who took Sinopharm jabs.

“On the surface of it, that’s an alarming finding,” said Dr. Kim Mulholland, a pediatrician at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute in Melbourne, Australia, who has been involved in the oversight of many vaccine trials, including those for a COVID-19 vaccine. Mulholland said the initial reports from Seychelles correlate to a 50% efficacy rate for the vaccine, instead of the 78.1% rate that the company has touted.

“We would expect in a country where the great majority of the adult population has been vaccinated with an effective vaccine to see the disease melt away,” he said. The experience in Seychelles stands in stark contrast to Israel, which has the second-highest vaccination coverage in the world and has managed to beat back the virus.

A study has shown that the Pfizer vaccine that Israel used is 94% effective at preventing transmission. On Wednesday, the number of daily new confirmed COVID-19 cases per 1 million people in Seychelles stood at 2,613.38, compared to 5.55 in Israel, according to The World In Data project.

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