Vaccine nationalism still the bottleneck: China Daily editorial

The contrast is striking. Many countries have asked the United States for COVID-19 vaccines, but the US has not provided any doses of any vaccine to any country, whereas an increasing number of countries are receiving vaccines from China, which has even provided vaccines as aid to underdeveloped countries.

And China donated 300,000 vaccine doses to peacekeepers of the United Nations on Friday, and those who are on peacekeeping missions in Africa will get the shots first.

The US is yet to finalize its plan to send millions of doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine to neighboring Mexico and Canada.

The US has hoarded far more doses of vaccines than it needs, and its control of raw materials for the manufacturing of vaccines has negatively impacted the control of the pandemic.

There is even a fight brewing between the European Union and the United Kingdom over vaccines. Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, said on Wednesday she was no longer prepared for vaccines made in the EU to be exported to the UK and other countries which have been markedly quicker rolling out inoculation programs. Von der Leyen has instructed her officials to prepare to invoke Article 122 in EU treaty law that would place the bloc on a war footing. It would permit the EU to seize factories, waive intellectual property rights and override patents and impose export bans.

It is clear from all these that vaccines will not be forthcoming from the EU and the US for developing countries.

Statistics from the United Nations show that while 75 percent of vaccinations have been administered in 10 developed countries, there are 130 countries which have not received a single vaccine dose yet. It is estimated that some underdeveloped countries will not be able to have their residents inoculated until 2024.

Rather than reflecting on how selfish and myopic some of the developed countries are regarding the global distribution of vaccines, politicians in those countries speak ill of the vaccines China and Russia have manufactured, even labeling China's provision of vaccines as a global public good as "vaccine diplomacy".

China is a committed front-runner in promoting equitable access to vaccines, and the safety and effectiveness of Chinese vaccines are earning recognition across the world.

China will press ahead with its provision of vaccines for as many countries as possible no matter what politicians in the West are saying as it knows that it is doing the right thing.

China hopes that those developed countries will realize as early as possible that they need to contribute to the global solidarity for the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic to bring it to an end as soon as possible, rather than erode it by doing what they are doing right now.