Several Chinese tourists admit to having gone to Macao in search of a “more effective” vaccine against Covid-19, at a time when China is facing an unprecedented wave of infections.
Gin Fan, a cryptocurrency analyst in Shenzhen, a city in the southern Chinese province of Guangzhou, paid HK$1,360 (about €165) in mid-December to gain access to the Pfizer/BioNtech vaccine in Macau. .
This immunizer, which uses messenger RNA (mRNA) technology, not available in China, is “more effective for different variants,” defended the 32-year-old woman from Lusa, who was vaccinated with the first two doses of the product by Chinese. Sinovac pharmaceutical company.
Gin Fan’s trip to Macau began to take shape when he saw a post on WeChat, the Chinese social network equivalent to WhatsApp, referring to the possibility of getting vaccinated at the Macao University of Science and Technology (MUST) hospital. through the Hong Kong pharmaceutical Jacobson Pharma, in charge of distributing the Pfizer / BioNtech vaccine in the territory.
“I did some research and mRNA vaccines have antibodies that act longer than inactivated vaccines,” said the young woman, admitting that the marking process in Macao “was not complicated.”
Lusa contacted Gin Fan through ‘Little Red Book’, a Chinese social network for sharing photos and videos, where only one of the ‘hashtags’ referring to the subject, #macauPfizer, had been seen by 177,000 people.
Among the posts on this channel, a woman with the ‘nickname’ Guo Guo, explains through a video how it is possible to complete the entire process: “After opening [da China]How can you best protect yourself and your family? You fly to Macau, you pay for the mRNA vaccine out of your own pocket.”
Another user named Ching Ye decided to travel to the administrative region in October last year, even before the announcement of the opening of China, after losing hope that the Pfizer vaccine would be put into circulation in the country.
“I waited a long time, but it didn’t happen. Not long ago I saw that Macao opened up to vaccinate people outside, ”she wrote.
The mRNA vaccines (the case of Pfizer / BioNtech) use part of the genetic code of the coronavirus, while those of the inactivated virus (such as the Chinese Sinovac and Sinopharm) are produced from the live virus. In terms of effectiveness, mRNA vaccines are associated with greater protection against the virus than inactivated virus vaccines, according to the Macao New Type Coronavirus Contingency Coordination Center.
Local health authorities recommended that citizens immunized with two doses of the Sinopharm vaccine, “the most requested by the local population”, opt for the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine for the booster dose.
Macau offers vaccines developed by the German-American consortium Pfizer/BioNtech and China’s Sinopharm, which is also available in mainland China.
Beijing, which until recently followed the ‘zero covid’ policy, betting on massive tests, the confinement of risk areas and quarantines, recently announced the abrupt cancellation of most prevention and containment measures, after almost three years of strict restrictions.
Experts estimate that, after the recent outbreak of Covid-19 in the country, around 600 million people have been infected, which represents 40% of the national population.
With the unprecedented wave of infections, the demand for mRNA vaccines has skyrocketed, with various foreign media noting that many Chinese tourists have chosen Macao for immunization.
Lusa tried to contact Jacobson Pharma, responsible for the action, to find out how many tourists went to the MUST hospital to get the vaccine, but so far no response has been received.
According to the Macao authorities, 122,671 doses of vaccines have already been administered to tourists locally.
Source: TSF
