Coronavirus: more China vaccines out for delivery as world scrambles for shots

Shipments include some donations made as part of Beijing’s ‘vaccine diplomacy’
US think tank says China is using a bigger share of doses at home than its case burden

Coronavirus pandemic

Simone McCarthy

Published: 7:30am, 13 Feb 2021

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Three more countries have said they are expecting deliveries of Chinese coronavirus vaccines this month as health authorities around the world scramble for supplies.

Bolivia, the Philippines and Hungary confirmed on Thursday they would receive shipments of hundreds of thousands of doses from China in February.

Mexico also said it had received its biggest batch yet, with a delivery of active ingredients for 2 million doses from China’s CanSino Biologics, while Serbia received half a million doses from state-owned Sinopharm on Wednesday, adding to a million delivered last month.

The announcements come as poorer countries struggle to get access to shots. According to the World Health Organization, three-quarters of the 128 million doses administered worldwide by Wednesday were in 10 countries, which together accounted for 60 per cent of global GDP.

The WHO called on leaders “to look beyond their borders” and share vaccines through the WHO’s global vaccine distribution platform, known as Covax, which aims to vaccinate those most at risk of Covid-19 at the same time, no matter where they live.

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At least 337 million vaccines are expected to be delivered worldwide through the programme in the first half of the year, with roll-out projected to start later this month.

China’s three leading Covid-19 vaccine makers have commercial deals with around 20 countries, but some deliveries announced this week also included donated doses.

In the Philippines, where a vaccine by Sinovac Biotech has yet to receive regulatory approval, 600,000 doses will be donated by China this month, according to a government official.

The Bolivian deal for an initial supply of half a million doses of another vaccine by state-owned Sinopharm would include 100,000 donated doses, Bolivian President Luis Arce said.

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Equatorial Guinea said on Thursday that 100,000 donated doses of the Sinopharm vaccine had arrived, marking what Chinese state media said was the first batch of vaccine aid to the continent from the Chinese government. Several African countries have been promised vaccine donations, and “priority access” for the vaccine was offered broadly earlier this year.

Laos and Brunei in Southeast Asia also received shipments of donated doses from China earlier this week, according to media reports.

Beijing has engaged in “vaccine diplomacy” to try to promote itself as a global benefactor, and pledged 10 million doses to Covax last week, pending WHO approval of the shots.

But there are concerns about the size of China’s domestic vaccination programme.

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The US-based Council on Foreign Relations said in a report released on Thursday that China was “by far the most egregious example” worldwide of administering doses at a scale disproportionate with its Covid-19 case burden.

Though it has 0.09 per cent of confirmed cases worldwide, China has used 26.77 per cent of the world’s early vaccine doses, giving it the highest ratio of doses per case, according to the report by the council’s Think Global Health initiative.

By comparison, the US has used the highest percentage of the global supply at 29.57 per cent, but accounted for 25.46 per cent of global cases.

China’s National Health Commission said more than 31 million people in the country had been vaccinated as of last week.

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The Sinovac and Sinopharm vaccines have both received conditional market approval in China.

Sinovac’s doses were also being given under emergency use in Indonesia, Brazil, Turkey and Chile, the company said earlier this week, while roll-out of the Sinopharm vaccine has begun in various countries, including the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, Serbia, Cambodia, and Egypt.

A third shot, developed by CanSino, yet to be approved in China for public use, was approved for emergency use in Mexico on Wednesday and in Pakistan on Friday.

The national authorisations come despite criticism from the international public health community that Chinese developers have not published clinical data on their shots.

Four other vaccine makers whose doses are being used in vaccinations outside their country of origin have published data from phase 3 trials in international scientific journals. Those are Russia’s Gamaleya Institute, Pfizer and BioNTech, US firm Moderna and AstraZeneca.

The Pfizer-BioNTech shot has received WHO emergency use licensing, a benchmark that national regulators across the world typically look to for their own approvals.

The Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine moved a big step closer to WHO approval on Wednesday, when a WHO advisory group released usage recommendations. Both are expected to be distributed via Covax in the first half of the year.

Decisions on WHO licensing for Sinovac and Sinopharm are expected next month at the earliest, according to the WHO.

Additional reporting by Reuters

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: China ships vaccines as world scrambles for doses