Can China stay ahead as a leading exporter of Covid-19 vaccines?

With just 1 per cent of people vaccinated in low-income countries, demand for Chinese jabs looks set to continue

But more data and better transparency will improve the reputation of the doses, including those still in development

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China has exported more than a billion doses of Covid-19 vaccines this year, including donations to low-income countries. Photo: Xinhua

Published: 7:00am, 21 Sep 2021Updated: 8:50pm, 21 Sep 2021

Since China approved its first two Covid-19 vaccines for emergency use slightly over a year ago, it has quickly scaled up its production to become the world’s largest exporter of vaccine doses against the disease.

In addition to fully vaccinating more than 1 billion of its people, China has exported over a billion vaccine doses – and estimates that its total exports of vaccines could reach 2 billion doses this year.

But the country’s rise to become a major player in the Covid-19 vaccine market is not without controversy – mainly because of a perceived lack of transparency and the way data from the late-stage trials was released.

The use of traditional technology to make whole inactivated virus vaccines (WIV) gave China an edge in terms of design speed. The jabs have been instrumental in reducing death and serious cases but they are less effective than those using advanced platforms such as the mRNA and protein subunit vaccines.

As more choices have become available in recent months, some developing countries have turned to other suppliers over concerns about the effectiveness of the Chinese jabs against the Delta variants.

Experts said China’s role as the top vaccine provider to developing countries would remain unchanged in the foreseeable future but its endeavour to become a major vaccines player using more advanced technologies such as the mRNA platform would depend on how it tests new candidates and verifies the data.