The COVID-19 pandemic has swept throughout the world and posed multifaceted substantial challenges in public health, the economy and society. To mitigate the pandemic, safe and effective vaccines are urgently needed. Development of vaccines was initiated when the genetical sequence of the virus was available in January 2020, since then more than 200 candidates derived from multiple platforms, including inactivated vaccines, live virus vaccines, recombinant protein vaccines, vectored vaccines, and DNA or RNA vaccines, have jointed the race and strived to pass the clinical evaluation stages, gradually adding knowledge on the nature of protective immune responses to COVID-19 1.
In China, two inactivated vaccines Sinopharm 2 and Sinovac 3 have been recently approved with conditional marketing authorization for emergency-use in December 2020 and February 2021, respectively. Then, the vaccination has been at first initiated targeting people who are occupationally exposed to high-risk of the infection, including those engaging in cold-chain imports and quarantine at ports / airports, maritime pilot, air crew, those working at fresh markets, those engaging in public transportation, healthcare staffs and those planning to go abroad in a short term, for border enforcement to prevent the imported cases. For the nationwide uptake, it is expected to expand the vaccination coverage in stages, and high-risk populations are prioritized. On the other hand, limited knowledge on safety and effectiveness have provoked vaccine hesitancy domestically and globally as well 4-6.
To this end, since rolling out the vaccination in the hospital setting, we have initiated routine monitoring the occurrence of post-vaccination side effects from the vaccines and its affecting factors, in order to inform the large-scale uptake. This short report summarized latest findings of the effort.