Waiting on mRNA Shots

Beijing refuses to allow Western vaccines even as the development of Chinese ones lags

- By Bruce Einhorn and Dong Lyu

A senior citizen receives a Covid shot at a Beijing mobile vaccination site in April

China's government has demonstrated it's willing to go to extremes in its quest to contain the virus. But one thing it has so far been unwilling to do is deploy a powerful tool against the highly contagious omicron variant: mRNA vaccines. These shots could reduce the chances of elderly and other vulnerable Chinese getting seriously ill or dying and possibly help the country transition out of Covid Zero.

Lining up the necessary supplies shouldn't be a problem. Toward the end of 2020, Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical Group Co. reached a deal with Germany's BioNTech SE to distribute 100 million doses of the mRNA vaccine the German company co-developed with Pfizer Inc., once China's drug regulator gave the green light. Approval is still pending, though. Worldwide data clearly indicates mRNA is the gold standard, says Joerg Wuttke, president of the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China, which wrote to the Chinese government in April urging it to allow the shots. Why waste time and wait? For what?

The wait, many analysts say, is for a local company to come up with its own mRNA vaccine. Since the start of the pandemic, China's government has touted self-reliance in fighting Covid, promoting domestic vaccines based on inactivated versions of the virus and barring all foreign ones from the market. Slightly more than 88% of China's 1.4 billion people have received two doses of those shots. Opening up to foreign-made mRNA vaccines risks embarrassing President Xi Jinping and other officials, says Allison Hills, senior consultant in London with Eradigm Consulting. For them to say now we are accepting BioNTech, she says, it's tantamount to saying ours are not as good.