Does Carrie Lam play politics with our health? Evidence mounts there is a case to answer

^{Yin Weidong, Sinovac founder, has faced accusations of corruption, according to the Washington Post}

Evidence mounts daily that Carrie Lam and her administration may have played politics with our health. It is too early to tell, but there does appear to be a case to be answered. Sinovac, whose Covid-19 vaccine was the first to be rolled out by our government, is a medically distinguished firm with very dodgy corporate ethics, indeed. In a word, it’s corrupt. Or was.

HONG KONG BUZZ may have been the first in the local media to raise the question, Is Carrie playing politics with our health? Our eyebrows rose when we saw in her Policy Address last year she talked only of bringing in the Sinovac Covid-19 vaccine (CoronaVac) for our people. Her speech was long on the matter of Covid-19 but short on vaccines. Only Sinovac got a mention. BUZZ wondered in print if Ms Lam’s over-eagerness to please her mainland masters had led her to focus amid a pandemic solely on China-made vaccine. The story went viral. Anti-CCP and anti-Hong Kong Government publications picked up the story and ran with it. The Government was stung. It spoke out. Was it a case of truth hurts?

Four people have now died in Hong Kong after being jabbed with Sinovac’s vaccine. All had underlying health issues and laymen should not jump to conclusions. Nevertheless, the Lam administration has been criticised for cutting corners to bring in the Sinovac vaccine They exempted it from the normal requirement that its Phase III data be published in medical journals and peer-reviewed. Also, China does not allow use of the Sinovac vaccine on over 60 year olds, but Hong Kong does. A few have died after being jabbed.

While it has a fine track record medically, Sinovac is a dirty corporate player, according to court testimony and its own admission in the annual report. “The fact that the company has a history of bribery casts a long shadow of doubt over its unpublished, non-peer-reviewed data claims about its vaccine,” said Arthur Caplan, medical ethics director at New York University.

The BBC quoted Associate Professor Luo Dahai of Nan Yang Technological University, who said without Phase II trial data it was difficult to assess the vaccine’s efficacy. “Based on preliminary data. . . CoronaVac is likely an effective vaccine but we do need to wait for the results of Phase III trials. These trials are randomised, observer-blind, placebo-controlled. . .with thousands of participants. This is the only way to prove a vaccine is safe and effective to be used at population level.”

The litany of Sinovac’s corruption is lengthy. We may never know the full story of its venality because of CCP media censorship. Four years ago Yin Weidong, Sinovac founder and CEO, Yin admitted in court he had paid US$83,000 to a regulator overseeing vaccine reviews, Yin Hongzhang, according to the Washington Post. Yin H said he expedited Sinovac vaccine certificates in return. Yin H got 10 years in prison; Yin W was not charged.

This case was not a one-off. Between 2008 and 2016 a total of 20 government and hospital officials in five Chinese provinces admitted in court to taking bribes from Sinovac staff, the Washington Post wrote.

Sinovac looks better when you focus on its medical accomplishments. It was first to begin clinical trials on a SARS vaccine in 2003 and first to bring a swine flu vaccine to market in 2009, according to Bloomberg. Its CoronaVac is an inactivated virus covid-19 vaccine. This has been praised for simplicity, using the same sort of immunological techniques going back to Edward Jenner three hundred years ago.

Phase III clinical trials of CoronaVac have been going on in Brazil, Chile, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines and Turkey. Brazil said CoronaVac is 50.4 per cent effective in preventing symptoms of infection, 78 per cent effective in preventing mild cases and 100 per cent effective in preventing severe cases. Turkey put CoronaVac’s efficacy at 91.3 per cent and Indonesia at 65.3 per cent.

Everyone paying attention, especially BUZZ readers, knows that the Lam administration has also brought in the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine to begin a large scale inoculation programme – see the recent BUZZ article. The AstraZeneca version is on the way, the Government said. It’s a mixed picture. But it seems fair to say there are valid questions about the Lam Government’s judgment.