China is participating in a vaccination effort backed by the World Health Organization, stepping in to fill a gap in global health leadership created by the Trump administration.
Beijing on Thursday joined the $ 18 billion Covax initiative that aims to give low-income countries the same access to vaccines as richer nations, China’s Foreign Ministry said. Details of China’s commitment, including the amount of funding, were not immediately disclosed.
“Even as China leads the world with various vaccines in advanced stages of R&D and extensive production capacity, it decided to join Covax,” spokeswoman Hua Chunying said in a statement on Friday. “We are taking this concrete step to ensure a fair distribution.” of vaccines, especially for developing countries, and we hope more capable countries will also join in and support Covax. “
President Xi Jinping promised in May that vaccines developed by China would become a global “public good” to be shared by all. In recent months, Beijing had been sending positive signals, suggesting that it would participate in the Covax program, without directly committing itself.
The decision could also become another point of contention with the United States, as tensions between the world’s two largest economies soar on fronts ranging from trade to technology to human rights. The Trump administration has refused to join Covax, and a White House spokesman said the United States “would not be constrained by multilateral organizations influenced by the corrupt World Health Organization and China.”
China’s participation is a huge victory for Covax, as the ability to deliver doses to even a fraction of China’s 1.4 billion people would increase critical mass, enhancing the alliance’s bargaining power.
Covax is led by the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations and the Gavi Vaccine Alliance. It currently has nine vaccines in development and nine under evaluation in its portfolio, with the goal of securing 2 billion doses by 2021.
For China, participation would provide a de facto insurance policy that would allow it access to any successfully developed vaccine. Beijing could also support the manufacture of a successful vaccine, regardless of which country develops it.
The decision could also help the country’s image following widespread criticism from abroad about how it handled the initial outbreak in the central city of Wuhan, where Covid-19 first emerged last year. China has pioneered the development of vaccines against the coronavirus. Nine of China’s candidate vaccines have entered clinical trials, with four of them obtaining approval for end-stage phase III clinical trials in foreign countries.
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