Explainer | Covid-19 vaccines for Hong Kong: how safe are they, and why is the issue a political hot potato?
- City’s leader has assured public that all residents will have access to vaccines
- Vaccination drive will be government exercise as entry barriers for private sector are high
Which vaccines are Hong Kong getting?
The government has signed advanced purchase agreements to procure 7.5 million vaccines each from two separate suppliers. The first batch of 1 million jabs, from Beijing-based Sinovac Biotech, is expected to arrive in January, while another million from overseas – co-developed by Germany’s BioNTech and US-based Pfizer, and secured via the mainland firm Fosun Pharma – is due in the first quarter of 2021.
The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines have been proven to have an efficacy rate of 95 per cent, while Sinovac is expected to publish the third-phase clinical data on its product soon.
A third agreement to be signed will bring another 7.5 million doses of the vaccine developed in a co-venture by British pharmaceutical firm AstraZeneca and Oxford University, though those will not be available until the second half of next year. Clinical results have shown that vaccine to have an average efficacy rate of 70 per cent so far.
