Sinovac hits back over reported US campaign to discredit China’s Covid-19 vaccine

Chinese biopharmaceutical company Sinovac has hit back following a report that the United States military ran a secret anti-vax programme during the Covid-19 crisis to discredit China’s vaccine, calling the Pentagon campaign a “wrong attack that will create enormous disaster”. A Reuters investigation published on Friday found that in the summer of 2020, 300 accounts were created on Twitter, now known as X, that disparaged the quality of Chinese face masks, test kits and the Sinovac vaccine – the first Covid-19 jab to become available in the Philippines. According to the report, tweets from the accounts typically featured the hashtag #Chinaangvirus, which means “China is the virus” in Tagalog. “Stigmatising vaccination will lead to a series of consequences, such as a lower inoculation rate, the outbreak and spread of disease, social panic and insecurity, as well as crises of confidence in science and public health,” Sinovac spokeswoman Yuan Youwei told Chinese media. She said that Sinovac’s corporate goal is to provide vaccines that can eradicate viruses and contribute to the health of people. “Currently we have overcome Covid, but the world is still not in peace,” Yuan added. “Sinovac will continue to help people live good and prosperous lives by preventing disease. We reckon that each profession should focus on their specialities, which is the right attitude.” The Reuters report said that the Pentagon’s campaign to discredit the Chinese vaccine began in the spring of 2020 and expanded beyond Southeast Asia before it was terminated in mid-2021, tailoring its content to local audiences across Central Asia and the Middle East through fake social media accounts on multiple platforms. In May 2021, former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte received his first dose of another Chinese jab, the Sinopharm Covid-19 vaccine. After vaccination, Duterte said he “felt good”, adding that collaboration with Beijing had helped “manifest the friendship between both countries”. In December 2021, the Philippines received an additional shipment of Sinovac vaccines donated by the Chinese government to help the Southeast Asian country recover from the pandemic. The US Department of Defence and State Department did not immediately respond to questions about the Reuters investigation. The US programme started under the administration of former US president Donald Trump and continued several months into Joe Biden’s presidency, according to Reuters. According to the report, social media executives warned the Biden administration the Pentagon was trafficking in Covid-19 misinformation. The White House issued an order to ban the anti-vax effort in the spring of 2021, according to Reuters, and the Pentagon initiated an internal review.