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LONDON. – China has urged the world’s wealthiest countries to play a bigger part in helping the rest of the world battle Covid-19 after the G-7 nations pledged to give away 870 million vaccine doses over the next year.
United Nations chief Antonio Guterres had said the figure, which rises to 1 billion doses when including funding promises, was too low. Former British prime minister Gordon Brown described it as an “unforgivable moral failure.” The total global requirement is put at around 11 billion doses.
China’s embassy in the UK, which was the host nation for the G7 meeting, issued a statement calling for additional efforts.
“We hope that the developed countries will provide more assistance and support to developing ones, and that the relevant countries will actually deliver their pledge of assistance,” the embassy statement said.
While vaccinating its own population, China has already sent 350 million doses around the world to 43 different countries on top of US$2 billion of funding to support developing nations battle the virus.
It has also underpinned global protective equipment supplies and testing systems, shipping at least 280 billion masks and 4 billion kits.
“China sets great store by international cooperation in response to Covid-19. While striving to put the pandemic under effective control at home, China has mounted a massive global humanitarian operation,” the statement from the embassy in London noted.
Meanwhile, China has approved a seventh domestically developed Covid-19 vaccine to meet increasing demand amid the country’s accelerating mass vaccination drive, media reports said last Wednesday, the same day that the country announced it had administered more than 800 million shots.
The latest approved vaccine was developed by the Institute of Medical Biology of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences based in Kunming, capital of South Southwest China’s Yunnan Province, Science and Technology Daily reported Wednesday.
Phase I/II clinical trials proved the safety and immunogenicity of the vaccine, which can quickly trigger an immune response in recipients, read the report.
At day 14 after two shots, the seroconversion rates of the neutralizing antibodies and anti-S antibodies reached 96 percent and 99,33 percent, respectively. Research also showed that antibodies triggered by the vaccine can cross-neutralize variants of the novel coronavirus, read the report.
The vaccine requires two shots to be administered at an interval of two to four weeks to build immunity in recipients. – Global Times/CGTN
Online Reporter