12:12 PM
The first Quad Summit meeting between India, Australia, Japan and the United States on Friday is expected to reach a decision on the Coronavirus vaccine, commented a top diplomat. India has also asked the other Quad members to invest in India’s vaccine production which can counter China’s increasing vaccine diplomacy as Beijing has committed that it will be distributing its vaccines from Asia to Africa, Europe and Latin America, according to the calculations of Reuters.
Secretary of State, Tony Blinken said, “We have a Quad summit meeting on Friday with President (Joe) Biden, and I expect we’ll see something on vaccines coming out of that summit. There are other things that we’re looking at that we’re working on in the days and weeks and months ahead to make sure that we are a leading international actor in creating greater access to vaccines”.
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March 10, 2021
While China’s Covid-19 vaccines are helping a number of countries carry out mass vaccination, its own rollout of the shots seems to be proceeding relatively slowly.
China administered 53 million doses to citizens as of Feb. 28, according to Zhong Nanshan, one of China’s most prominent epidemic experts. While that doesn’t seem a low number, it only covers around 3.6% (link in Chinese) of its 1.3 billion citizens. In comparison, the US has administered more than 90 million doses, covering around 18% of its people, while the UK has given around 22 million first doses or nearly 30% of the population.
For sure, China’s massive population is a major factor in its low share of coverage, but there are other elements at play too. China’s early success in containing the virus is, ironically, one of them. Despite being the epicenter of the pandemic in early 2020, the country now reports new cases only in the single digits, and life in China has basically come back to
Beijing has committed to provide at least 463 million doses of its home-made COVID-19 vaccines through exports and donations across the world from Asia to Africa, Europe and Latin America, according to Reuters calculations.