Vaccine diplomacy not as simple as a shot in the arm

‘Concerns including dearth of vaccine data and perceived use for geopolitical goals stand in the way of China's soft power push...

‘Rich nations have bought almost all of next year's supply of the two vaccine front runners - one by Pfizer-BioNTech and the other by Moderna - according to the People's Vaccine Alliance (PVA), a network of organisations that includes Amnesty International, Oxfam and Global Justice Now. Canada, for instance, has ordered enough vaccines to inoculate each Canadian five times, although it has pledged to share any excess with other countries.

‘The situation is such that nine in 10 people in 67 developing countries - including nations like Cambodia, Laos and Pakistan - stand little chance of being vaccinated next year, said the PVA this month. To these countries, China's vaccines are a lifesaver.’

Read here (Straits Times, Dec 28, 2020)

Spotlight on China’s competing Covid vaccines

‘Chinese authorities have already approved multiple Covid-19 vaccines for emergency use in the country, and nearly a million Chinese have already been vaccinated with one candidate. Several local governments are already placing orders for domestically developed vaccines, though the Chinese government hasn’t confirmed how many people it’s aiming to vaccinate as part of emergency approval. The first international shipments of the vaccine, by private Chinese company Sinovac, have also already arrived in Indonesia this week in preparation for a mass vaccination campaign ahead of expected local approval...

‘So who are the companies developing these vaccines in China, and what do we know about them?’ 

Read here (Asia Times, Dec 12, 2020)

WHO to look at controversial Italian samples in search for origins

‘The World Health Organization is looking into controversial research suggesting the coronavirus that causes Covid-19 was circulating in Italy months before it was first detected in China, the health body said on Friday, while cautioning against using such data to speculate about the disease’s origins.

‘The WHO plans to run tests with the Italian researchers who made waves earlier this month for their peer-reviewed findings based on tests of blood samples from a cancer screening carried out starting before the pathogen was detected in China.’

Read here (South China Morning Post, Nov 27, 2020) 

Coronavirus was on many continents before Wuhan outbreak, Chinese team says

‘Paper by Chinese researchers says a strain can be traced to eight countries from four continents before the Wuhan outbreak. First human transmission may have occurred on the Indian subcontinent, it says – but other scientists question the finding.’

Read here (South China Morning Post, Nov 27, 2020)

China and Russia are using coronavirus vaccines to expand their influence. The US is on the sidelines

“Global health and pharmaceutical interventions are getting sucked into balance-of-power politics,” said David Fidler, senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations. “For the U.S., this creates geopolitical nightmares, because we are not in the game.” Beijing and Moscow are marshaling the vast powers of their states to develop vaccines for domestic and international use, accompanied by grand claims of scientific and manufacturing prowess. There are critical questions about safety and efficacy — or even how much each country can produce. But, for the moment, those questions are overshadowed in a seller’s market.

Read here (Washington Post, Nov 24, 2020)

Xi says China ready to boost global Covid-19 vaccine cooperation and travel

‘President Xi Jinping said on Saturday (Nov 21) that China is ready to step up global Covid-19 vaccine cooperation, and called for better international coordination on policies to facilitate movement of people.

‘Pharmaceutical companies and research centres around the world are working on potential Covid-19 vaccines, with large global trials of several of the candidates involving tens of thousands of participants underway. China has five home-grown candidates undergoing Phase III trials. With that [global movement] in mind, Mr Xi said China would propose the creation of a mechanism by which travellers' coronavirus test results were recognised internationally through digital health codes.’

Read here (Straits Times, Nov 20, 2020)

Almost a million people inoculated with Chinese Covid-19 vaccine: Sinopharm

‘Nearly a million people have taken an experimental coronavirus vaccine developed by Chinese company Sinopharm, the firm said, although it has not yet provided any clear clinical evidence of efficacy. China has been giving experimental Covid-19 vaccines to people including state employees, international students and essential workers heading abroad since July. 

‘Sinopharm's chairman told media this week that nearly a million people have now received their vaccine for emergency use, though he did not provide a specific figure. "We have not received a single report of severe adverse reaction, and only a few had some mild symptoms," Mr Liu Jingzhen said in an interview re-published by the state-owned firm on Wednesday (Nov 18).’

Read here (Straits Times, Nov 20, 2020)

Sinopharm JVCo to sponsor 10,000 doses of Covid-19 vaccine for Malaysian frontliners

‘China National Pharmaceutical Group (Sinopharm), through GI Healthcare Resources Sdn Bhd — a joint-venture company (JVCo) with local investors — has agreed to sponsor 10,000 doses of the former's Covid-19 vaccine for Malaysian frontliners.

‘The sponsorship was agreed upon yesterday via a meeting between Malaysian officials, led by Home Minister Datuk Seri Hamzah Zainuddin and Health Minister Datuk Dr Adham Baba, and Sinopharm's chairman Liu Jingzhen via video conferencing.’

Read here (The Edge, Nov 19, 2020)

China insists coronavirus can be imported through food, the world disagrees

‘There have been sporadic outbreaks across China, mostly linked to workers dealing with cold-chain imported food. The country said last week that it would ban food imports from countries with coronavirus outbreaks in their production facilities, or whose products were found to contain traces of the virus. Trade partners have bristled at the restrictions targeted at preventing imports of the virus, but China's severe measures should not be hastily written off: its travel bans and mandatory mask-wearing efforts earlier this year have proven prescient.’

Read here (Straits Times, Nov 18, 2020)

The Chinese model against Covid-19: A total war of the people, for the people, by the people

‘Wang Hui, an intellectual leader of the so-called New Left movement, offers an interesting alternative explanation [on China's Covid response]... Wang, by the way, is quite well-known among China specialists in the West. Harvard University Press is scheduled to publish an English edition of his multivolume The Rise of Modern Chinese Thought.

‘...he argued that Beijing utilised the old Maoist-Leninist models of the people’s war and total war, to mobilise the entire nation – horizontally across the medical and scientific professions, and up and down the ranks from the top Chinese leadership to humblest local neighbourhood units. Everything was put on hold, even the all-important economy, while the nation’s resources were devoted to a single task.’

Read here (South China Morning Post, Nov 13, 2020) 

WHO-backed probes move forward to try to shed light on early days of coronavirus

‘Among the work laid out is further investigation into wild animals traded at Wuhan’s Huanan market, where a number of the first known patients worked and shopped. The virus is believed to have originated in bats before passing to humans, likely through an intermediary animal, but it remains unclear whether this crossover happened at the market or outside it, according to the WHO. So far that market has proved a dead-end for animal clues: of the 336 samples from “frozen animal carcasses” that were tested in the market, none were positive for the virus, according to the November 5 report, which updated known figures on animal sampling.

‘Other research will involve looking back before December 2019 to review hospital records, death registers and disease surveillance data, and test stored blood samples to find any cases that appeared before those that are already known. Unpublished government records obtained by the South China Morning Post indicated that Covid-19 cases were identified in Hubei province as early as November 17.’

Read here (South China Morning Post, Nov 13, 2020) 

China seeks to flip the script on Covid blame game

‘Chinese state media is advancing a possible alternative explanation for the origin of the Covid-19 pandemic, one that claims that the contagion may have first arrived in China from abroad in imported frozen foods. Chinese officials quoted in the reports suggest  “cold chain food contamination” could debunk the widely held belief that the novel coronavirus first emerged from a wet market in the Chinese city of Wuhan, from where it reputedly made its lethal global spread.’  

Read here (Asia Times, Nov 4, 2020) 

More mass testing in China after 137 Covid-19 cases in Xinjiang: All new cases asymptomatic

‘Mass testing began on Saturday evening to cover 4.75 million residents in and around Kashgar, Xinjiang province, after a 17-year-old garment factory worker tested positive for the virus. The new cases - all asymptomatic - were linked to a factory in Shufu county where the girl and her parents worked, the Xinjiang health commission told a press briefing on Sunday.’

Read here (Channel News Asia, Oct 26, 2020)

China's battle against Covid-19

‘A moving 30-minute feature film [released on the Martin Jacques Youtube channel] about how China fought Covid-19. Mainly filmed in Wuhan, it captures the agony of the city and the heroic efforts of the healthcare workers, both those from Wuhan and those who came from all over to China as volunteers to offer their support.’

View here (Martin Jacques, Oct 25, 2020)

China wants to supply the world with its coronavirus vaccine

‘China plans to rapidly ramp up its capacity to produce a vaccine for the coronavirus (Covid-19), state media CCTV has announced. It plans to dominate vaccine supply domestically and globally, despite the fact Western nations are unlikely to acquire a Chinese vaccine. It will be pushed to the rest of the world instead. China's vaccine was developed in almost the same way as the "Oxford vaccine" in the UK, using virus enhancement techniques to create an inert but powerful antibody response, which if used with a second booster shot could offer several years of immunity, even against mutant strains, according to Chinese scientists.’

Read here (Asia Times, Oct 21, 2020)

World’s vaccine testing ground deems Chinese Covid candidate ‘the safest, most promising’

‘Brazil is one of the world’s top COVID-19 vaccine testing grounds. Now officials there say that CoronaVac, the experimental COVID-19 vaccine from Chinese developer Sinovac, is the safest of the coronavirus immunizations evaluated in the country so far.

“The first results of the clinical study conducted in Brazil prove that among all the vaccines tested in the country, CoronaVac is the safest, the one with the best and most promising rates,” São Paulo Gov. João Doria told reporters in Brazil on Monday.’

Read here (Fortune, Oct 20, 2020)

Frozen food package polluted by living coronavirus could cause infection: China’s CDC

‘China's disease control authority said on Saturday (Oct 17) that contact with frozen food packaging contaminated by living new coronavirus could cause infection. The conclusion came as the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) detected and isolated living coronavirus on the outer packaging of frozen cod during efforts to trace the virus in an outbreak reported last week in the city of Qingdao, the agency said on its website.

‘The finding, a world first, suggests it is possible for the virus to be conveyed over long distances via frozen goods, it said.’

Read here (Straits Times, Oct 17, 2020)

China got better. We got sicker. Thanks, Trump

‘Public health expert Dr. David Katz argued in a New York Times op-ed and in an interview with me back in March that we needed a national plan that balanced saving the most lives and the most livelihoods at the same time. If we just focused on saving every life, we would create millions of deaths of despair from lost jobs, savings and businesses. If we just focused on saving every job, we would cruelly condemn to death fellow Americans who deserved no such fate.

‘Katz argued for a strategy of “total harm minimization” that would have protected the elderly and most vulnerable, while gradually feeding back into the work force the young and healthy most likely to experience the coronavirus either asymptomatically or mildly — and let them keep the economy humming and build up some natural herd immunity as we awaited a vaccine.

‘Unfortunately, we could never have a sane, sober discussion about such a strategy. From the right, said Katz, we got “contemptuous disdain” for doing even the simplest things, like wearing a mask and social distancing. The left was much more responsible, he added, but not immune from treating any discussion of economic trade-offs in a pandemic as immoral and “treating any policy allowing for any death as an act of sociopathy.”

Read here (New York Times via Salt Lake Tribune, Oct 15, 2020)

Indonesia aims to start administering coronavirus vaccines in early November

‘Indonesia is aiming to start administering coronavirus vaccines in early November by relying on supply from Chinese drugmakers, as the world's fourth most populous country fights a health crisis that may result in its first recession in more than two decades. The Coordinating Ministry for Maritime and Investment Affairs on Monday (Oct 12) said 100,000 doses will be supplied by CanSino Biologics, the first Chinese company to test a Covid-19 vaccine on humans, in November.’

Read here (Straits Times, Oct 12, 2020)

China's Qingdao orders citywide Covid-19 testing following new infections

‘China's Qingdao city said on Monday (Oct 12) it will conduct Covid-19 tests for the entire population of more than 9 million people over five days after new cases appeared linked to a hospital treating imported infections. The city reported six new Covid-19 cases and six asymptomatic cases as of late Oct 11. Most of the cases were linked to the Qingdao Chest Hospital.’

Read here (Straits Times, Oct 12, 2020)