Chinese COVID Vaccine Deliveries Around the World Have Essentially Stopped

Image via Bridge Consulting.

China’s once enormous global COVID vaccine distribution drive has effectively come to a halt this year, according to new data published by the public health consultancy Bridge Consulting in Beijing. It’s not clear what prompted the sharp dropoff in vaccine deliveries, but it could complicate China’s pledge to Africa to donate 1 billion doses before the end of the year.

Last Fall, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced at the FOCAC conference in Senegal that China would donate 600 million jabs and provide another 400 million from joint venture manufacturing facilities on the continent. But so far there are only two factories in Africa that produce Chinese vaccines, one in Egypt and the other in Morocco, and their output are in the tens of millions of jabs — far below the hundreds of millions that will be required for China to meet its goal.

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