China fills gap left by US in covid vaccine program

China will participate in a World Health Organization- backed initiative to provide a coronavirus vaccine to developing countries, filling a gap in global health leadership after US President Donald Trump rejected the program.

Beijing on Thursday joined the $ 18 billion Covax initiative that aims to give lower-income countries the same access to vaccines as richer nations. The move came with  China “leading the world with several vaccines in advanced stages of research and development and with extensive production capacity,” spokeswoman Hua Chunying said in a statement on Friday.

“We are taking this concrete step to ensure equitable distribution of vaccines, especially in developing countries, and we hope that more capable countries will also join and support the Covax project,” he said.

The measure,  allows China to positively differentiate itself from the United States. while tensions rise between the world’s two largest economies in sectors ranging from trade to technology to human rights.

The Trump Administration withdrew from the WHO and declined joining  Covax. A White House spokesman said the United States would not be “restricted by multilateral organizations influenced by the corrupt World Health Organization and China.”

In May, Chinese President Xi Jinping promised that the vaccines developed by China would become a global “public good” to be shared by all.

The decision could also help improve the country’s image after receiving widespread criticism from abroad about how it handled the initial outbreak in the central city of Wuhan, where Covid-19 originated last year. A global survey released this week by the Pew Research Center found that negative perceptions of China reached record levels in the United States and other major economies.

“In many ways, this is a soft power victory for China, coming amid a lot of negative information in other fields in recent weeks,” said Nicholas Thomas, associate professor of health security at the City University of Hong Kong. “It is a victory facilitated by President Trump’s rash decision to withdraw from the WHO and his shortsighted refusal to engage the United States with Covax. Now, anything the United States does in this area will look like an attempt to tie China, when the United States was expected to lead. “

Democratic  presidential contender, Joe Biden, who has a double-digit lead over Trump in national polls, promised in July to rejoin the WHO if he wins the November 3 election “and restore our leadership on the world stage.”

China’s participation is also a big win for Covax, since the possibility of providing doses to even a fraction of the 1.4 billion people of China would increase the critical mass, increasing the bargaining power of the alliance. Covax is led by the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) and the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI). It currently has nine vaccines in development and nine under evaluation in its portfolio, with a goal of securing 2 billion doses by 2021.

More than 170 economies are now involved with Covax, deals are in the pipeline for vaccines, and the program is nearing its initial fundraising goal to support low-income countries, Gavi CEO Seth Berkley said in a statement

China has pioneered the development of vaccines against the coronavirus. Nine of its candidate vaccines have entered clinical trials, and four of them have already been approved for end-stage phase III clinical trials in foreign countries. Indonesia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Morocco, and Egypt have formal agreements with China’s major vaccine manufacturers.

For Beijing, participation would provide a de facto insurance policy that would allow it access to any successfully developed vaccine. China could also support the manufacture of a successful vaccine, regardless of which country develops it.