Censors come into action as China's latest vaccination scandal ignites

BEIJING : Chinese censors on Sunday suppressed articles and ads on the vaccine industry as an online outcry over the country's latest vaccine scandal.

Regulators said last week that they had stopped the production of an anti-rabies vaccine.

It was just the latest in a series of health and safety scandals that fueled the fear of basic food safety and the drugs and anger of sleepy regulators.

Chinese censors and regulators struggled to keep abreast of the public's response, suppressing messages on WeChat as state media tried to take control of the story.

On Sunday night, the Food and Drug Administration (CFDA) of China announced that it had ordered the shutdown of any production at the vaccine manufacturer and initiated an investigation.

Changchun Changsheng Biotechnology is the second largest manufacturer of rabies vaccine in China. a major publicly traded vaccine manufacturer.

Anxiety increased over the weekend as an essay alleging that corruption and dark practices in the vaccine industry were spreading through WeChat. Internet users have republished the self-edited essay as censors to delete the content.

The CFDA said last week that the problematic rabies vaccine had not left the Changsheng factory

. has already stopped the production of another vaccine – against diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough – that regulators found mediocre last year and which also attracted public attention [19659009]. In Beijing, an anonymous official of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention told the local paper The Paper that parents in the Chinese capital did not have to worry: " Beijing does not have any of these two vaccines in question, the public can be comfortable. "

The regulators of Guangdong and Sichuan, quoted by the public broadcaster CCTV told residents that the problematic Changsheng vaccines had not been made available to them in their province.