在全球的临床试验结果面前，西方媒体承认：中国疫苗有用 ｜经济学人精讲第883期

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本文选自《经济学人》1月23日刊文章。中国疫苗已在全世界展开临床试验和应用，虽然效果不一，但临床试验表明疫苗确实有效。在新冠疫苗的竞赛中，中国无疑是佼佼者，中国疫苗开始拯救世界。西方媒体往往带着偏见看中国，对中国疫苗尤其不信任，但是中国疫苗在世界各地的临床试验结果让他们不得不承认：中国的疫苗还是有用的。

选文精讲

Chinese covid vaccines 中国的新冠疫苗

China’s jabs may have an important role

中国的疫苗可能会发挥重要作用

But there is uncertainty over their efficacy

但它们的有效性仍存在不确定性

Jan 23rd 2021 |

One probable reason why the efficacies recorded by these trials vary so much is that the results from Turkey and Indonesia were based on far fewer participants and fewer recorded cases of covid-19 than those from Brazil. This makes it hard to work out accurate figures for them. Trials in different countries also differ in the way they are run—another possible source of inconsistent findings.

这些试验记录的效果差异如此之大的一个可能原因是，土耳其和印度尼西亚疫苗接种者和记录的新冠病例远少于巴西，这导致这两个国家很难计算出准确的数字。不同国家的临床试验的进行方式也有所不同，这可能是导致不同结果的另一个原因。

The Brazilian trial is the largest, and probably the best run, of the bunch. It involved more that 10,000 volunteers who were health-care workers. Maurício Nogueira, a professor of virology at a state medical school in São Paulo, who is one of the principal investigators involved in this trial, points out that 50% is a conservative estimate of the vaccine’s efficacy. He offers three reasons.

• best of the bunch: 一批中最好的

巴西的临床试验规模最大，也可能是最好的。有1万多名志愿者参与，他们是医疗工作者。Maurício Nogueira是位于圣保罗的一所国立医学院的病毒学教授，也是参与这项临床试验的主要研究者之一，他指出疫苗效果的保守估计是50%，他给出了三个理由。

One is that, because of the trial participants’ professions, they were more frequently exposed to high concentrations of virus than was the average Brazilian. A second is that health-care workers are more likely than others to notice that they have a symptom of covid-19. The third is that the trial used a particularly sensitive definition of what constituted a potential case of the disease that should therefore be put forward for testing. This was that participants should be tested after reporting only one symptom, rather than three, as demanded by some other trials. The trial’s organisers say that if these “very mild” cases of covid-19 are ignored, and only “mild”, “severe” and “fatal” cases considered, then the vaccine’s efficacy reaches 78%.

一种是，由于临床试验参与者的职业，他们比一般巴西人更频繁地暴露在高浓度的病毒中。第二，医疗工作者比其他人更有可能注意到他们有新冠症状。第三，该临床试验使用了一个特别敏感的定义，即在什么样的潜在（新冠）疾病症状需要进一步测试。这就是说，参与者只有在出现一种（新冠）症状后就要进行测试，而不是像其他一些临床试验要求的那样，出现三种症状才需上报。临床试验的组织者表示，如果忽略这些“非常轻微”的新冠病例，只考虑“轻微”、“严重”和“致命”病例，那么疫苗的有效性将达到78%。

感谢阅读