A Hungarian study of blood from 450 people found that the Chinese-made vaccine, Sinopharm, seemed to offer less effective protection from Covid-19 than other vaccines.
Whilst most of the samples surveyed showed that those injected 2 weeks previously with the vaccine developed detectable immune response, only around 50% of those over the age of 80 had detectable immune response after their vaccination.
The study has been posted online by the authors but has not yet been peer-reviewed by other scientists.
If the findings are confirmed by other studies, it will likely be a huge setback for Sinopharm as those most vulnerable to Covid-19 are people over the age of 80. Since the adoption of Sinopharm there has been growing push-back and skepticism about the effectiveness of the two Chinese-made vaccines, with some countries like the Seychelles, which had heavily relied on these products, seeing unexpected surges in their infection rates, despite high levels of vaccination.
The vaccines have become a growing theatre of conflict between the United States and China, as each nation has sought to win friends and influence governments through the deployment of vaccines to poorer countries around the world.