Following is the transcript of remarks by the Secretary for Food and Health, Professor Sophia Chan, on the COVID-19 Vaccination Programme at a media session this afternoon (March 8):

Reporter: Can I ask your professional opinion, how do you view the rate of the four suspected serious adverse events among some 93 000 doses of CoronaVac administered compared to the rate among other countries that were also administered the Sinovac vaccine, such as Brazil, or other countries in Europe or in Asia as well? Thank you.

Secretary for Food and Health: Thank you for your question. First of all, we review some of the data from other countries which have administered Sinovac as well as BioNTech vaccines to understand more about the adverse events reported. However, the adverse event reported is only the first step. The most important is for our Expert Committee (Expert Committee on Clinical Events Assessment Following COVID-19 Immunisation) to review and also to assess and analyse the causality, the causality assessment, that is whether the adverse event is directly related to vaccination. So until and unless we have established this relationship, the current rate is probably not comparable at this stage. But of course we will continue to review the situation and also review not only the vaccination data, but also the data, for example, of having these adverse events which happen every day in the Hospital Authority's Accident and Emergency Department. We will also review all these different rates. The Department of Health and the Hospital Authority are looking at these statistics. Once we have more information, they will report.

(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript.)

Ends/Monday, March 8, 2021
Issued at HKT 16:48

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