‘Foreign Minister Wang Yi pledges more technology transfers and production agreements to get vaccines to developing countries. The UN estimates 11 billion more doses are needed to vaccinate 70 per cent of the world’s population against the disease.’
Read here (South China Morning Post, August 6, 2021)
‘Over half of the 50 nations surveyed at the end of 2020 reported coverage of China had become more positive in their national media since the onset of the pandemic, while less than a quarter reported it had become increasingly negative.
‘The change was most favorable in Europe, which scored 6.3 on a scale of one to ten, where one is the most negative and ten is the most positive. China’s image plummeted in North America, coming in at 3.5.
‘The overall increase in positivity coincided with an uptick in Chinese outreach. Three-quarters of the journalists we surveyed said China had a visible presence in their national media, compared to 64% in a previous survey we conducted for IFJ in 2019.’
Read here (Nieman Lab, May 14, 2021)
‘A new hybrid Cold War is underway, with US, China and pivotal states engaging in a power play, says NUS Business School’s Alex Capri...
‘[V]accine diplomacy has shed light on an even more fundamental truth: A hybrid cold war is underway, involving the US, China and other pivotal states. Its by-product is hybrid warfare, a mix of diplomatic, economic, cyber and information-related actions, all of which fall below the threshold of armed conflict but are, nonetheless, disruptive to the workings of the international system.
‘There will be no returning to the kind of globalisation the world experienced over the past four decades. Consequently, state and non-state actors must adapt.’
Read here (Channel News Asia, Apr 8, 2021)
‘Many of the Caribbean's sovereign states have enough vaccines to cover their populations. They knew how to profit from international competition
‘For the small island states of the Caribbean, vaccine diplomacy is crucial to managing the Covid-19 pandemic. Even if their population is barely that of a district of São Paulo, countries like Grenada and Antigua & Barbuda are sovereign states, and as such they have a seat and vote at the United Nations – just like Brazil or Mexico. The 15 states in the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) together have more voting power than the whole of South America. And the current crisis shows how this sovereignty can be converted into a supply of vaccines that larger states can only dream of.
‘Take, for example, Dominica (not to be confused with the far larger Dominican Republic). With its 70,000 inhabitants, the island had already received 70,000 vaccine doses from India at the beginning of February – not just promised or planned, but actually there on the island, ready to be used. In the meantime, China has stepped forward and flown in more vaccine doses. Dominica has the epidemic under control like no one else: so far, there’s not a single death on the island. The number of infected people is 161 – not per week, as on the neighbouring islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique belonging to France, but in total.’
Read here (IPS Journal, Mar 31, 2021)
‘As the world nervously watches the rollout of the various covid-19 vaccines and surveys the human and economic cost of the pandemic, this period of optimism is hard to imagine. Yet Hotez, a pediatrician and a specialist in tropical infectious diseases at Baylor College of Medicine who co-directs a vaccine-development center at the Texas Children’s Hospital, shows that pandemics had been rebounding well before the first covid-19 cases emerged in Wuhan. His book draws lessons from the field of tropical infectious diseases, and also from his international work as a science envoy—a position created jointly by the State Department and the White House—during Barack Obama’s Presidency.
‘Hotez is perhaps uniquely positioned to expound a broad vision that marries science with geopolitics. (In the past year, he has been a prominent TV expert on the pandemic.) We learn not only about familiar scourges such as polio and diphtheria but also about a host of so-called neglected tropical diseases, including dengue, leishmaniasis, schistosomiasis, and Chagas. He melds an account of their biology with documentation of the social and political factors that enable them to spread, and passionately insists that we cannot prevent pandemics in isolation from wider global currents. He identifies a cluster of non-medical drivers of deadly outbreaks—war, political instability, human migration, poverty, urbanization, anti-science and nationalist sentiment, and climate change—and maintains that advances in biomedicine must be accompanied by concerted action on these geopolitical matters.’
Read here (The New Yorker, Mar 29, 2021)
‘The leaders of the US, Australia, India and Japan have agreed to deliver one billion doses of coronavirus vaccine to much of Asia by the end of 2022. The joint commitment was made following the first leaders' meeting of the so-called Quad - a group formed in 2007. The vaccines - expected to be the single-dose Johnson & Johnson product - are set to be manufactured in India.’
Read here (BBC, Mar 13, 2021)
‘Vaccine grabs, the refusal to relax patents to enable mass production, and the use of vaccines for diplomacy run the risk that poorer nations may not be protected against Covid-19 quickly enough. This will prolong the pandemic, even for the richer nations.’
Read here (The India Forum, Mar 5, 2021)
‘The Philippines has finally kicked off its Covid-19 vaccine rollout with much-publicized donations from China but rising controversies around the rollout will prevent Beijing from declaring a “vaccine diplomacy” win.
‘China recently delivered 600,000 doses of the vaccine developed by the Beijing-based company Sinovac Biotech and frontliners across the country are set to be among the primary beneficiaries. The drive kicks off as the Philippines grapples with one of the region’s worst outbreaks and steepest economic recessions caused by extended lockdowns.’
Read here (Asia Times, Mar 4, 2021)
‘China's vaccine diplomacy campaign has been a surprising success: It has pledged roughly half a billion doses of its vaccines to more than 45 countries, according to a country-by-country tally by The Associated Press. With just four of China's many vaccine makers claiming they are able to produce at least 2.6 billion doses this year, a large part of the world's population will end up inoculated not with the fancy Western vaccines boasting headline-grabbing efficacy rates, but with China's humble, traditionally made shots.
‘Amid a dearth of public data on China's vaccines, hesitations over their efficacy and safety are still pervasive in the countries depending on them, along with concerns about what China might want in return for deliveries. Nonetheless, inoculations with Chinese vaccines already have begun in more than 25 countries, and the Chinese shots have been delivered to another 11, according to the AP tally, based on independent reporting in those countries along with government and company announcements.’
Read here (CP24, Mar 2, 2021)
‘At the end of January the President of Chile, Sebastián Piñera, gave a speech on the tarmac of Santiago airport. ‘Today is a day of joy, excitement and hope,’ he said, standing in front of a Boeing 787 which had just arrived from Beijing. Inside it were two million vaccine doses produced by the Chinese company Sinovac. It was the first of two similar-sized shipments arriving that month.
‘A few days earlier, the President of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, had emerged from Covid confinement to thank a ‘genuinely affectionate’ Vladimir Putin for pledging 24 million Sputnik doses to Mexico in the coming months. Hopes of vaccinating his country with the Pfizer vaccine had dissipated when supply dried up. Pfizer blamed ‘global shortages’, but here was the perfect opportunity for Putin to play the hero and to send the world a message: in times of need, Moscow, not Washington, saves the day.
‘This is vaccine diplomacy, the new great game. Nations which are hungry to compete with the West — and especially America — are using their homegrown coronavirus vaccines as a way of gaining influence. They are exchanging their vaccines for loyalty and acts of public obeisance.’
Read here (The Spectator, Feb 20, 2021)
‘Russia and China are rising to the rich versus poor challenge by supplying much-needed vaccines to nations that would otherwise be far down on the global list. While the US and EU remain preoccupied with their own Covid-19 problems, Russian and Chinese companies are forming partnerships with each other and countries around the world.
‘That “vaccine diplomacy” success, however, is already starting to raise concerns in the West. Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine, originally poo-pooed in the West as a mere publicity stunt by President Vladimir Putin, has not only proved to be one of the most effective vaccines – providing over 90% protection – but also is inexpensive and easy to use...
‘Until recently, China’s vaccine industry was considered a relatively minor player on the international scene. But the race to develop and deploy Covid-19 vaccines has provided China the impetus to massively upgrade its capacities while establishing itself as a major global supplier.
‘Covid-19 vaccines by at least four Chinese producers are in final, Phase III trials in a dozen countries, with more in the pipeline. More importantly, the two presently leading Chinese vaccines, produced by the Sinovac and Sinopharm companies, have already been administered to many millions of people in emergency vaccination campaigns in the developing world.’
Read here (Asia Times, Feb 8, 2021)
‘India has decided to export 8.1 lakh doses of Covaxin to Oman, Mongolia, Myanmar, Bahrain, Mauritius, the Philippines and the Maldives as a goodwill gesture, people in the know said. Government sources said Serum would supply a few lakh doses of Covishield to the Seychelles, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan and Nepal.’
Read here (Economic Times, Jan 19, 2021)
‘Clouds are gathering over Indonesia’s Covid-19 inoculation rollout plan after Brazilian scientists reported this week that the efficacy of China’s CoronaVac vaccine was just barely over 50%. The readout was well below the 78% mark the same Brazilian researchers asserted last week and considerably lower than trials on the Sinovac-produced vaccine conducted in other countries.
‘Indonesia, which has the highest number of Covid-19 cases in Southeast Asia at 850,000, has already ordered 125.5 million CoronaVac doses. Its president, Joko Widodo, received a shot of the same vaccine on Wednesday morning in a symbolic start to Indonesia’s national vaccination program. Two days earlier, Indonesia’s food and drug agency became the first regulator in the world to approve use of the Sinovac vaccine, after its own local trials found 65.3% efficacy, above the World Health Organization’s 50% threshold for advised use.’
Read here (Asia Times, Jan 14, 2021)
‘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)
“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)
‘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)
‘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)
Download PDF here (Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, Oct 2020)
‘Chinese scientists have offered to carry out joint vaccine trials with their Russian counterparts in what could be seen as a vote of confidence following Moscow’s decision to rush through approval for a Covid-19 vaccine. The plan was announced by China’s top respiratory diseases expert Zhong Nanshan on Sunday during a symposium with Russian scientists. He did not specify which vaccine candidate would be tested or where the trials would take place.’
Read here (South China Morning Post, August 17, 2020)
‘China has emerged as a leader in novel coronavirus vaccines, a development that will enhance it as a global power but also raises concerns over safety and the potential for Beijing to use its status in territorial disputes. The country has nine vaccine candidates in clinical trials, including five in Phase 3, the final stage of the process toward approval. This achievement is the result of years of state-led research on infectious diseases. Last week, Chinese drugmaker CanSino Biologics announced it would conduct a Phase 3 trial in Saudi Arabia with 5,000 volunteers. Of the 29 new vaccines in clinical trials around the world, nine are in China, the most of any country. Of the seven that are in Phase 3, China has five. Chinese vaccines are expected to be in practical use as early as the next few months.’
[This story is behind a paywall]
Read here (Nikkei Asian Review, August 17, 2020)