A British couple has been barred from boarding a flight to Malta by their own government despite being fully vaccinated. They received two doses of Covishield, the AstraZeneca vaccine produced by the Serum Institute of India.
Despite being chemically identical to the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine and approved by the UK’s health regulatory body, the World Health Organization and 15 European Union nations, Europeans vaccinated with Covishield do not have the same rights as those vaccinated with AstraZeneca.
There’s another problem: AstraZeneca has still not been approved by America’s Food and Drug Administration, limiting quarantine-free travel into the United States. Australians fully vaccinated with either Pfizer or AstraZeneca still have to undergo 10 days of self-isolation when entering some EU countries.
This vaccine nationalism, with preferential treatment given to some brands and countries over others, opens up a human rights can of worms.
It’s all about regulation
The WHO has approved a wide range of vaccines for emergency use, with more lax approvals than most countries. Vaccines have to have an efficacy rate of 50% or above and undergo safety and quality testing, whereas many countries require higher efficacy rates.
Covishield has yet to be approved by the European Medicines Agency, the EU’s version of the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA). Why? Indian authorities simply failed to get their approval request in early.
Australia’s TGA also hasn’t approved Covishield. The only COVID-19 vaccines currently recorded on the Australian immunisation register are AstraZeneca and Pfizer.
The same goes for AstraZeneca with the FDA. While AstraZeneca said it would seek emergency use authorisation back in March, by May it had still not applied — despite the US stockpiling 60 million doses — and it has since distributed the doses to other countries. AstraZeneca is likely now to skip seeking emergency use approval with the FDA and go through the usual approval route.
Many Chinese-manufactured vaccines have yet to be approved by Western nations, again causing problems for vaccinated Asian travellers.
What does this mean for equity?
Regulation aside, preferential treatment for some countries over others is a major concern, global health security associate professor Adam Kamradt-Scott tells Crikey.
“It speaks to discrepancies with how our global context is emerging,” he said. “This has been one of the big concerns associated with things like vaccine passports, that it does lead to discrimination [and] potential human rights abuses.”
One such human rights abuse would be requiring people of certain nationalities to undergo invasive medical procedures, which includes the COVID-19 nasal swab test, or be turned away at the border, despite being vaccinated with approved vaccines. This goes against international health regulations, Kamradt-Scott says.
“Internationally it’s a bit of a minefield and it will require a lot of negotiation through WHO and other multilateral forums to actually sort this mess out,” he said.
Wealthier nations are scrambling to get booster doses of vaccine favourites, such as Pfizer, while other countries are facing dose shortages for their healthcare workforces.
With Australia so far behind in the vaccine rollout, easy travel is off the cards for a while yet.
If a nasal swab is a human rights abuse, I’ve been abused!
But seriously, this is a bit of a minefield. We read of Indonesian doctors dying of Covid despite being fully immunised with the Chinese vaccine. If it can happen to these presumably relatively young and healthy people, how safe are these other vaccines?
But if course with the modern definition of “news” it all depends on where you read it!!
Is the ABC website good enough?
At least 10 out of 26 Indonesian doctors who died of coronavirus in June had been vaccinated with the Chinese Sinovac vaccine, which has been approved for emergency use by the WHO.
The WHO has approved a wide range of vaccines for emergency use, with more lax approvals than most countries. Vaccines have to have an efficacy rate of 50% or above and undergo safety and quality testing, whereas many countries require higher efficacy rates.
Desperate poorer countries have to cop the 50% efficacy vaccine like Sinovac.
Depends. So much conflicting data. Venezuela reporting 90%+ efficacy for Sinovac in actual use.
Really? Venezuela’s ability to track the outcomes must be very high (perhaps as high as the UK’S) or the numbers administered very low to come up with a vaccine result as good as mRNA vaccines.
You are sprouting BS again. The efficay rate is actually unkown for ALL of these new Vaccines & is guessed at. It would not be a stretch to infer that the USA would say that Sinovac is not on par with their Vaccines. Safety & quality testing has been minimal & they all have been rushed out.
Going on the millions of doses administered in the UK and USA there is massive data to support AZ and Pfizer vaccines. I refer to the UK and USA because both have very effective and extensive data tracking.
Neither the US or the UK have adequate tracking for side effects.
At least the data from Clinical phases 2 and 3 were made available for the Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines. Sinovax did its phase 3 trials on the population of Indonesia without collecting the data.
The UK only acknowledged that there were side effects from the AZ after the Scandinavian countries started asking them about it. Suddenly the clotting problem was declared as 1 in a 1,000,000 when the Norwegians ceased using it when the number seemed to be closer to 1 in 25,000.
Did it tell you the total number of Indonesian Health workers who have been vaccinated ? That number might give a context to those who have been infected. I noticed that a fully vaccinated Sydney Covid ward nurse tested positive just yesterday. In fact I believe Royal North Shore Hospital has a problem from the numbers of its staff currently in quarantine. Context is everything.
It’s talking about deaths, not number infected.
I followed your link and the only numbers I found were “Indonesia said on May 12 that its study of 120,000 healthcare workers who had received the vaccine found it was 94 per cent effective at preventing symptomatic disease.”
Am I missing something or do we need a correct link with that information. ?
Sorry, that’s not my link, it’s embedded in the ABC para I cut and pasted.
Here is the link to the full article. I extracted the relevant sentence because it’s near the end of a long article.
Again I stress, this is deaths – we all know that vaccinated people can get infected, but dying is very rare.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-07-14/trainee-doctors-on-the-front-line-of-indonesia-covid-disaster/100285804
Dying is supposed to be rare.
If a double vaccinated person catches covid it is known as a “breakthrough” case. They are expected and are rare. It has always been a reality with all successful vaccines.
Anti vaccine conspiracy theorists often raise breakthrough cases as “proof” that vaccines don’t work, along with other illogical claims, such as that female fertility is reduced, or SIDS, etc. There’s a range of well worn and debunked beliefs/fears used by the uninformed ever since medications were invented. What’s interesting to me is that even in the face of overwhelming evidence and millions of lives saved their still exists such delusional caveman logic about vaccines.
Something about the believer thinking if they can’t comprehend it, then it mustn’t be true.
Luckily most people are more more logical.
ALL of the experimental Vaccines are approved ONLY for emergency use. All!
Exactly, they are all first generation with producer liability exemptions. Anything go wrong the company has no liability. Presumably the purchasing authority will carry any liability that should arise.
Maybe the issue here is that we are the first generation in human history that expects warranties on everything in life.
Sorry, James 1. The vaccines which were given emergency approval as a stop gap method.
AZ and Pfizer and Moderna have got full approval for use from the TGA and Novavax is awaiting its final approval.
Sinovac is apparently 50% effective.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-55642648
Not according to studies published in Lancet, https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)01429-X/fulltext there is another from the New England Journal of medicine https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2107715.
Crikey has just published an article on vaccine nationalism that has relevance. Think of the size of the market and it’s value to those who have developed a vaccine with WHO registration. Think of the geo-politics involved, always useful to knock the competition, AZ, the UK flag vaccine has itself suffered badly in this respect.
The Lancet is now a paid for publication, not the medical journal it used to be.
It publishes non peer reviewed bits of ephemera.
I’ll notify the editor.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/5/6/who-says-sinovac-covid-vaccine-effective-but-some-data-lacking
A coronavirus vaccine developed by China’s Sinovac has been found to be 50.4% effective in Brazilian clinical trials, according to the latest results released by researchers.
It shows the vaccine is significantly less effective than previous data suggested – barely over the 50% needed for regulatory approval.
The Indonesian government has relied primarily on Chinese-made Sinovac for its vaccine rollout, including to immunise health workers, but a growing number of those vaccinated are falling ill and dying.
Sinovac has been approved by the World Health Organization, which said efficacy results show it prevents symptomatic disease in 51 per cent of those vaccinated.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-07-18/asia-flying-abroad-for-covid-vaccinations-pfizer-astra-zeneca/100288904
For the latest on Covid vaccine adverse events check out at : https://tinyurl.com/6cnysuxp . make sure to click on first link “Covis Vaccine Injuries”. This is essential information which any sensible person should know about.
Can’t find a reputable website to link to James?
The resident QAnon nutter
Probably afraid that typing in a legit site might make his fingertips catch fire, like a vampire fondling a crucifix.
Is there a link to “Long Covid” syndrome?
As for the prosate check i had last month…..I’m still in counselling….
Do you suffer from needle phobia? No PSA for you?
The two Chinese vaccines and the Russian one have not released their data and phase 2 and 3 results.
Anecdotally, their efficiency rate for Alpha and Beta strains is only 52%.
WOT??
Those using the product seem happy enough Ratty. Plenty of confirmatory info out there, India will be the next major source of info as they have started production under Licence for both the two jab and single jab versions. Currently we are in the marketing and geopolitical phase of a global vaccine rollout. In the longer term efficacy will show as to what the biological capacity of different vaccines are. In immunological terms the most useful vaccine will be the one that promotes the best T cell response rather than a sugar rush of antibodies that needs consistent booster shots.
“One such human rights abuse would be requiring people of certain nationalities to undergo invasive medical procedures, which includes the COVID-19 nasal swab test…” –
Seriously? A human rights abuse?
Reminds me of last year when around 33% of international arrivals in Melb refused to be tested, compared to some insignificant figure in NSW, 0. something! I guess it was a cultural thing
Australian production of AstraZeneca vaccine in early July just one-tenth of what government promisedProduction at CSL facilities in Melbourne vastly reduced after falling from 1m doses a week in May to as low as 232,800 in June
Last week, there were only 260,000 doses.
That is a fraction of what the government initially said it would distribute to primary care, state governments, and aged and disability care in July.
“The commonwealth does not anticipate any difficulties in supply of locally produced AstraZeneca vaccine.”
But to reach its initial target of releasing between 4.4m and 5.2m doses in the first two weeks of July, the government would have had to release the entirety of its second dose contingency supply to make up the gap left by CSL’s reduced supply.
This week, the government quietly scaled down its forecasts for the availability of AstraZeneca in the next two months.
It now estimates it will release between 2m and 2.3m doses each week in August and September, a potential reduction of up to 10.7%.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/jul/16/australian-production-of-astrazeneca-vaccine-in-early-july-just-one-tenth-what-government-promised
Funny you don’t read that in the Murdoch press
Goebbels is very fussy
Tip of the iceberg. The real issue is going to be WHERE you get vaccinated. I will guarantee that Australia will not recognise the vaccination status of of visitors to Australia unless they have been vaccinated in Australia. Other countries will then retaliate…
Pretty true but it’s also down to vaccine wars. Countries need to recognize vaccines produced by other countries or international travel will never recover.
As i mentioned earlier, we are so divided that we’ll probably have states making their own vaccines and playing off against each other and the feds with the approvals….
This brain fart from the Prime Minimal and his idiot friend of his in the UK fails to acknowledge that not all “Vaccines are created equal”.
“Fully vaccinated with AstraZeneca means the maximum chance of not ending up in the ICU of 85%, a minor reduction in transmission whilst fully vaccinated with Pfizer gives a 96% chance of not ending up in the ICU, mild reduction in transmission”
Did anyone say that these were immunizations?
That is right because a vaccination is not always an immunization.
Who needs to throw in a bit of vaccine nationalism?
This whole vaccine passport for travel is going to prove a minefield as vaccination alone doesn’t mean that individual isn’t a carrier. This from Hong Kong today.
Coronavirus: opening Hong Kong to vaccinated people from Britain an ‘extremely dangerous’ idea; city records 1 new imported case
I hope you don’t just read the headlines but inform yourself trhoroughly.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-07-18/asia-flying-abroad-for-covid-vaccinations-pfizer-astra-zeneca/100288904
The ABC is the main reason we have so much misinformation. They are wall to wall BS ! You just make yourself look stupid quoting the propaganda channel known as the ABC. They have showed no footage of the massive rallies held in London , Germany, France etc in protest agianst lockdowns etc. Over 1 million people in London 2 weekends ago & not even a squeak.
Neither did they air the many huge rallies in NSW & Melbourne — and you believe the ABC !
James, as you probably have read here ive been pretty critical of the abc too. But my criticism wasnt in relation to covid.
Do you think the official chinese news site Xinhua has been better than the ABC in reporting about covid?
See what I mean about ‘muscle memory’ when het up –
“…no footage of the massive rallies held in London , Germany, France etc in protest agianst lockdowns etc. Over 1 million people in London..”
Even the same typo.
real person or bot?