Chinese vaccines for COVAX honor pledge they will be public good: China Daily editorial

A Foreign Ministry spokesperson announced on Wednesday that China will provide 10 million doses of vaccines to the global vaccine sharing initiative COVAX, at the request of the World Health Organization.

This is obviously good news for developing countries, which have to look on without being able to do anything as the developed countries squabble over the distribution of vaccines among themselves.

China promised that it would do whatever it could to promote the fair distribution of vaccines and make sure that developing countries could have access to vaccines when it joined COVAX in October 2020.

China has reiterated time and again on different occasions that the vaccines it develops will be a public good. The 10 million vaccines that China will provide honor that promise.

Now the total number of novel coronavirus infections has surpassed 100 million worldwide and more than 2 million people have died of COVID-19.

With a variety of vaccines being rolled out, the world has pinned its hope on the vaccines as an effective way to stop the spread of the virus.

However, the reality is that 95 percent of the vaccines that have been manufactured have been administered in 10 developed countries. Most of the developing countries cannot expect to have access to vaccines, although they desperately need them.

Little wonder that WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said: "The world is on the brink of a catastrophic moral failure — and the price of this failure will be paid with lives and livelihoods in the world's poorest countries."

It is of utmost importance to do something to promote the fair distribution of vaccines in such circumstances especially when the short supply of vaccines, thanks to the lack of raw materials and insufficient production capacity, has seriously hamstrung the distribution of vaccines to developing countries.

The 10 million vaccines China will provide are far from enough to meet the needs of developing countries. But what China has done underlines the need for solidarity and multilateralism in the global fight against the virus.

No country can expect to be completely safe unless the virus is brought under control worldwide.

In today's globalized world, no country can expect its economy to thrive unaffected by the pandemic when the world economy is in recession because of the virus.

China knows this. That explains why China has provided much needed materials for many countries from the very beginning of the pandemic and has sent medical teams overseas to assist some countries in their fight against the virus.

China will continue to do whatever it can to extend help to the global endeavor against the pandemic, and also hopes that other major countries will follow its example.