BY VANESSA GONYE/LORRAINE MUROMO THE success of Zimbabwe’s mass vaccination programme is under scrutiny after a senior Chinese official made a rare admission that its COVID-19 vaccines being administered in the country have a lower efficacy rate than previously thought, prompting the World Health Organisation (WHO) to launch a probe. Chinese vaccines Sinovac and Sinopharm are being rolled out in the country and with Zimbabweans initially hesitant to take up the inoculation due to lack of information about its efficacy, but the number had increased with 223 492 having received the jab as of Sunday. Gao Fu, head of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention told a weekend conference in China that authorities had to “consider ways to solve the issue that efficacy rates of existing vaccines are not high,” despite Zimbabwe forging ahead with mass import of the jab. WHO officials yesterday said it had deployed health teams to China to assess the efficacy of the Asian nation’s vaccines. WHO country representative Alex Gasasira told NewsDay that the experts were already in the Asian country to study the Sinovac and Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccines being rolled out in Zimbabwe. “Those are still undergoing evaluations by WHO, and until the experts give a comprehensive report there is not much that we can say. Experts from WHO have been sent to China for the assessment,” he said. Gao Fu’s statement in the south western city of Chengdu on Saturday marks the first time a senior Chinese official has admitted that the country’s vaccines were not as effective as previously alluded to. “The protection rates of existing vaccines are not  high,” he was quoted saying. He then listed two options to solve the problem: one which is to increase the number of doses, or to adjust the dosage or intervals between shots; and the other being to mix vaccines developed from different technologies. Zimbabwe has taken delivery of two types of vaccines from China — Sinovac and Sinopharm — whose efficacy was said to range from 50,4% to 83,5% and 72,5% and 79,4%, respectively. Apart from the Chinese Sinovac and Sinopharm jabs, the Indian Covaxin is also being administered. The southern African country is targeting to inoculate at least 10 million people, which is 60% of the population to achieve herd immunity. COVID-19 national taskforce chief co-ordinator Agnes Mahomva, however, told NewsDay that she had confidence in the vaccines, adding that they met the WHO standards in terms of efficacy. “The vaccines have gone under WHO evaluation and have proven to have a good efficacy rate. According to WHO guidelines, any vaccine with 50% efficacy can be used. The efficacy of vaccines is different; it can either be 30% or 50%, and so it depends with where you are getting your information from,” Mahomva said. “We still have big confidence in what we have because the main aim of a vaccine is to prevent sickness, hospitalisation and death. We know it’s not 100%, but the vaccines are within the WHO efficiency rate, and we go by the WHO guidelines, we have our clinica