BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The European Commission said on Thursday that the European Union had offered to provide free COVID-19 vaccines to Chinese authorities, as China faces an epidemic explosion in the wake of the early abandonment December of its so-called “zero COVID-19” policy.
“Given the situation (of the epidemic) of COVID-19 in China, the European Commissioner (for Health) Stella Kyriakides has contacted her Chinese counterparts to offer the support and solidarity of the EU,” said one. spokesperson for the EU executive at a press briefing in Brussels.
This proposal includes both the provision of “public health expertise” and the donation by the EU “of vaccines adapted to the variant”, Omicron added this spokesperson, without specifying either the type or the quantity of vaccines concerned. .
At this stage, three new bivalent messenger RNA vaccines – which target both the original strain of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus and sub-variants of Omicron, still the majority in the forms in circulation – are available in Europe.
These are versions of mRNA vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer – BioNTech.
According to this EU spokesperson, the Beijing authorities have not yet responded to this offer, which was first reported by the Financial Times.
Asked about it in Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning kicked in, telling Reuters that vaccine coverage and treatment capacity continued to progress in China, with an “adequate” supply.
She added that China was open to “strengthening solidarity and cooperation with the international community” in order to better face the health challenges linked to the COVID-19 epidemic, even if it is “able to to meet the demand of each person wishing to be vaccinated” on its soil.
So far China has only used the vaccine from the Chinese laboratory Sinovac to immunize its population.
Called CoronaVac, it is an inactivated vaccine containing an adjuvant (the classic technology used for example for vaccines against influenza, cholera or tetanus, for example), with less efficiency compared to that of new mRNA vaccines.
China-wide vaccination coverage remains completely unknown, with authorities in Beijing providing only extremely patchy data on the epidemic situation.
Germany was able to send German companies in China, as well as its embassies and consulates there, batches of anti-COVID-19 mRNA vaccines that the German biotech BioNTech developed with the American laboratory Pfizer last month. pursuant to an agreement reached during Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s visit to Beijing in early November.
According to a source familiar with the matter, discussions are underway with other European governments so that these doses, mainly intended for German nationals, can benefit nationals of other countries.
(Written by Kanjyik Ghosh in Bangalore, with Charlotte Van Campenhout in Brussels and Yew Lun Tian in Beijing; French version Camille Raynaud and Myriam Rivet, edited by Sophie Louet)