Chinese President Xi Jinping learned about the progress of scientific research on coronavirus vaccines and antibodies during a visit to the Academy of Military and Military Medical Sciences in Beijing, China, on March 2, 2020.
Ju Peng | Xinhua News Agency | Getty Images
China on Friday said it has joined the global Covid-19 vaccine initiative co-led by the World Health Organization, which has become the largest economy to date to pledge to help buy and distribute shots.
The move by China, where the new coronavirus was first reported, is in separate talks with the WHO to assess locally-produced Covid-19 vaccines for international use.
A recent survey of advanced countries has also drawn international criticism of Beijing’s handling of the epidemic.
A statement from China’s foreign ministry on Friday did not say how much Beijing would support the so-called Caucasus program, although President Xi Jinping called on the May 2 bill to help deal with the epidemic in the next two years. More than 1 million people have sued to date.
“We are taking this concrete step to ensure equal distribution of the vaccine, especially in developing countries, and hope that more competent countries will also join and support Kovacs,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chuning said in a statement.
The Quox initiative aims to deliver at least 2 billion doses of the vaccine by the end of 2021.
China joins some 168 countries that have already announced their participation in the COVs, including 76 rich, self-financing countries. But neither the United States nor Russia has joined the program.
Covex is co-led by the GAVI Vaccine Alliance, the WHO and the Alliance for Preparation Innovation. It is designed to discourage national governments from stockpiling the Covid-19 vaccine and to focus on the first vaccination of the most at-risk people in each country.
China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Hua also said in a statement on Friday that China has sufficient Covid-19 vaccine production capacity and would prefer to supply developing countries when the vaccine is ready.
China has at least four experimental vaccines in the final stages of clinical trials – two have been developed by the state-sponsored China National Biotech Group, and the remaining two belong to Sinovac Biotech and Cancino Biologics, respectively.
The fact that clinical trials have not been fully completed has also led to the inoculation of hundreds of thousands of essential workers and other risk-averse groups, raising safety concerns among experts.
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