“COVID-19 vaccines have no anti-cancer effects,” said Dr. Zhang Wenhong in reply to some queries online during a life & health forum held in Shanghai.

Zhang is director of the Department of Infectious Diseases at Huashan Hospital and leader of the Shanghai team of experts in treating COVID-19 cases.

Why do people falsely believe that the vaccines are able to cure cancers? In Zhang’s reply, he explains one of the vaccines in use today is a nucleic acid vaccine which was originally planned to treat tumors. With the same method, the COVID-19 vaccine has been developed, but the antigens are not the same. Tumor-related antigens and novel coronavirus antigens are not the same things. However, the technology cannot cure tumors yet, which means that tumors are more difficult to combat. “It doesn't mean that patients who have received the COVID-19 vaccines can be free from tumors,” said Zhang.

(Video by Ding Yihan/Eastday.com)