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BEIJING: China will buy COVID-19 vaccines for 1 percent of its population, or 15 million people, through a global scheme backed by the World Health Organization, the Foreign Ministry said on Friday (October 9). ).
Beijing’s decision to join the COVAX program means that China “will procure vaccines through the facility for a portion of its own population, as with other countries,” a spokesman for GAVI, which co-leads the scheme, said earlier.
READ: China Joins WHO COVAX Global COVID-19 Vaccine Facility
The first batch of vaccine available under the plan will be scarce, so there would be less for other countries if China had secured doses for a large number of its 1.4 billion people, ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said at a news conference.
China has at least four experimental vaccines in the final stages of clinical trials, and is also in talks with the WHO to have its domestically manufactured vaccines evaluated for international use.
Countries that are self-financing in the COVAX scheme can request enough vaccine doses for 10-50 percent of their population, GAVI said on its website.
The funded countries will receive enough doses to vaccinate up to 20 percent of their population in the longer term, GAVI said.
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