China to further help Africa’s vaccination drive, shielding continent from Omicron

[superadmin]

China has vowed to further help African countries boost their vaccination drive, which Chinese observers said could significantly strengthen the continent's immunological barrier against the COVID-19 pandemic and tackle serious global vaccine inequality. The emergence of the new variant Omicron, which was first detected in South Africa, once again highlights the dire consequences of vaccine inequality in developing countries, especially in Africa, where only 6 percent of its population have been fully vaccinated.

China is also expected to further step up its efforts to help African countries with vaccine production, meeting the continent's core needs with cost-efficient methods for producing inactivated vaccines that are more suitable for these countries than the West's high-priced and complicated mRNA vaccines, analysts said. 

In order to help vaccinate 60 percent of the African population, a goal set by the African Union, China will provide African countries another 1 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccine with 600 million doses offered for free and the rest offered through various means including joint production by Chinese and African enterprises, President Xi Jinping announced in a keynote speech delivered via video link at the opening ceremony of the Eighth Ministerial Conference of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) in Beijing on Monday.

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