In a rare moment of truth on Saturday, a top Chinese Communist Party official observed that China’s COVID-19 vaccines aren’t very effective.

Gao Fu, the head of China’s Centers for Disease Control, noted that the Sinopharm and Sinovac vaccines “don’t have very high protection rates.” Considering the barely 50% protection offered by China’s Sinopharm vaccine and the roughly 80% protection offered by its Sinovac vaccine, Gao’s assessment represents an obvious fact. Especially when one compares China’s vaccines to the 97%+ effectiveness of the American Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines.