China provides vaccine aid to 53 developing countries, exports to 22

China is providing vaccine aid to 53 developing countries, including those in Africa that lag behind in inoculation, and exporting vaccines to 22 countries.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said at Monday’s press conference that a shipment of Chinese vaccines will leave for Equatorial Guinea on Tuesday.

The Global Times learned from Chinese vaccine producer Sinovac on Monday that the company had delivered more than 10 million doses to countries in Asia, the Mediterranean, Latin America and Africa.

China has also decided to provide Egypt and the Arab League with batches of COVID- 19 vaccines, and is willing to facilitate Egypt’s procurement of vaccines produced by Chinese companies, said Chinese Ambassador to Egypt Liao Liqiang on Sunday.

The moves came amid reports of South African health officials’ announcement on Sunday of pausing the country’s rollout of AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccine after a study showed it offered reduced protection against the COVID- 19 variant first identified there.

“I have been expecting a low efficacy of AstraZeneca’s vaccine on the variant in South Africa due to previous results of Pfizer and Moderna on the variant, but have not thought it could be so low, nearly useless,” Zhuang Shilihe, a Guangzhoubased vaccine expert, told the Global Times on Monday.

Nineteen of the 748 people in AstraZeneca’s clinical trials in South Africa were infected with the new variant, compared to 20 out of 714 people in the group who were given a placebo, according to media reports.

Considering the low efficacy, Zhuang called for global vaccine makers to adjust their vaccines to the new variant in South Africa immediately before it spreads more widely in the world.

Zhuang said “mRNA vaccines may require 2- 3 weeks to adjust coding. Inactivated vaccines may take longer than two months as vaccines makers have to cultivate new virus of the new variants. “But as far as I know Chinese vaccine makers are able to adjust in a shorter period,” he said.