In a statement announcing the Covax deal, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said China is confident it could ramp up manufacturing. “We are taking this concrete step to ensure equitable distribution of vaccines, especially to developing countries, and hope more capable countries will also join and support Covax,” Hua said.
China’s about-face now leaves two leading countries in the vaccine race, the United States and Russia, outside the alliance. Other backers include Japan, Britain, Germany and the European Union.
The White House said last month it would not join Covax because it did not want to be “constrained by multilateral organizations influenced by the corrupt World Health Organization and China.” Covax is co-led by the Gavi vaccine alliance, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations and the WHO.
The Trump administration has vociferously attacked the WHO and withdrawn funding after the agency’s officials appeared to repeat Chinese government talking points and praise Beijing’s response to the pandemic despite Chinese officials’ missteps and coverups in the crucial early days. WHO officials also locked out Taiwan, which has boasted exemplary success in controlling the virus, from participating in its forums under political pressure from Beijing.
Although China faced intense international criticism after the outbreak spread from Wuhan in January, the government quickly brought the coronavirus under control at home and began an aggressive diplomatic effort to mend its image abroad with donations of masks and medical equipment.
While refusing international calls for an investigation into the origins of the virus, the Chinese government has pitched itself as forward-looking and altruistic: Speaking before the WHO assembly in May, Chinese leader Xi Jinping promised $2 billion over two years to help the covid-19 response and said any future Chinese vaccines would be a “global public good” — a statement the government repeated Friday in announcing its participation in Covax.
The Covax program seeks to equitably distribute a pool of at least 2 billion vaccines to high-risk people in each country. Although vaccine-producing countries would have to share as part of Covax, participation in the program represents a kind of insurance policy: countries that fail to produce a homegrown vaccine might be locked out of the global pool if they don’t take part.
Officials from China’s Center for Disease Control said a Chinese vaccine could be ready for general public use as early as November, while the National Health Commission said China can ramp up to produce up to 610 million vaccines doses in 2021 and more than 1 billion in 2022.
China has four vaccines in phase three clinical trials, including one co-developed at a military research institute that has already been administered to soldiers and overseas state employees. Russia’s Gamaleya Research Institute and Britain’s AstraZeneca both have vaccines in the last stage of trials, as do American firms Moderna, Johnson & Johnson and Novavax.
Jerome Kim, head of the International Vaccine Institute, an independent nonprofit founded as part of the United Nations Development Program, praised Xi for calling the vaccine a global public good and said it was important that China, an economic powerhouse with several vaccine candidates in the final stage of testing, was showing “solidarity and support” for the fight against covid-19.
“Importantly now the three organizations that lead Covax have to work to ensure that the Chinese commitment can be fully realized — that the vaccine from Chinese manufacturers will meet WHO prequalification standards, that it is safe and effective, and importantly can be provided at a reasonable cost,” Kim said.