Can China stay ahead in the global vaccine diplomacy race as the US offers 80 million doses to the world?

Name: India’s mass-vaccination drive falters as country hits 20 million coronavirus cases
Uploaded: 2021-05-22T07:00:19.000Z
Duration: 3 min 26 s
Description: India’s mass-vaccination drive falters as country hits 20 million coronavirus cases

Washington and its fellow members of the Quad earlier this year raised expectations they would play a key role in vaccine distribution - but India’s second wave put paid to that

China has taken the lead through its shipments of more than 265 million doses, as its tussle for influence with the US runs alongside the world’s urgent need for more inoculations

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Workers transport the Sinopharm Covid-19 vaccine at the Phnom Penh International Airport in Cambodia. Photo: Xinhua

Maria Siow

Published: 3:00pm, 22 May 2021Updated: 3:28pm, 26 May 2021

When Gayle Smith, the US State Department’s global coordinator for Covid-19, spoke to reporters on Wednesday about Washington’s vaccine distribution plans, one question kept coming up: would any of the 80 million doses US President Joe Biden pledged to share with the world go to Asian economies in need of them – such as India, Taiwan and Vietnam – or would supplies be fully distributed by the Covax vaccine-sharing programme?

Smith said she could not confirm the process at this point, but stressed that the United States was assessing “what the most effective allocation of these doses will be” based on countries’ needs.

Quizzed about whether Washington would be going against the principles of ensuring equity and of not practising vaccine diplomacy should it distribute supplies outside of the World Health Organization’s Covax Facility, Smith said: “We do not intend to use [vaccines] as means for influence or pressure, and our decisions will be made on the basis of need, public health data, and again, collaboration with key partners, absolutely including Covax.”

The exchange has cast the spotlight on the increasing pressure faced by the US to share its excess supply of vaccines, as domestic Covid-19 cases fall and close to 60 per cent of American adults over the age of 18 have received at least one shot. Earlier this week, WHO head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the world was in a state of “vaccine apartheid”, with poorer countries that made up half the world’s population having received just 17 per cent of doses.

In Asia, the US and its fellow members of the Quad alliance – Australia, India and Japan – had in March raised expectations that they would play a key role in vaccine distribution.

The Quad’s leaders, in seeking to demonstrate unity against China’s growing influence, announced after a virtual meeting that they would, among other things, expand vaccine production. The plan was for the US, Japan and Australia to provide funding for India, the No 1 producer of vaccines globally, to manufacture up to 1 million doses for distribution to Asia – mainly Southeast Asia – by the end of next year.

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India’s mass-vaccination drive falters as country hits 20 million coronavirus cases

But a surge of Covid-19 cases in India soon after saw Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government freeze vaccine exports. The Serum Institute of India, the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer, has not been able to fulfil production commitments of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine for Covax, and recently said it could probably only restart exports to the facility and other countries later this year. Covax has only shipped out 68 million doses to developing nations so far, falling behind its target of 2 billion doses this year.