EU offers China free vaccines due to COVID outbreak

European Commissioner Stella Kyriakides has offered assistance to CHINA, including free covid vaccines to fight the outbreak. The FT writes that there is an excess supply of these drugs in the EU.

The European Union has offered free covid-19 vaccines to China to help contain the outbreak after the lifting of most measures to combat the pandemic, according to the Financial Times (FT), citing representatives of the European Commission.

The proposal was announced a few days before the meeting of EU HEALTH ministers, which will be held on January 3. According to the FT, European Commissioner for Health Stella Kyriakides wants to work out a "European response" to the prospect of a new wave of CORONAVIRUS after China abandons its "zero tolerance" policy.

“Kyriakides reached out to her Chinese counterparts to express solidarity and support, including expert public health assistance, as well as donating EU vaccines,” one source told the newspaper. Beijing has not yet responded to the proposal.

Chinadecided to cancel the mandatory COVID test when entering the country Society

In China, during the vaccination campaign, domestic vaccines Sinovac and Sinopharm were used and foreign-produced RNA preparations were not used. Michael Ryan, executive DIRECTOR of the World Health Organization's (WHO) health emergencies program, said two doses of Chinese vaccines would provide 50% protection for people over 60 years of age and is "inadequate" for a country with a population as large as China's. According to the organization, three doses are needed for more reliable protection, and only 40% of residents over 80 received them. At the same time, 83% of adults in the European Union have been fully vaccinated.

According to the FT, there is now an excess supply of drugs in the EU due to long-term contracts with manufacturers.

In November, protests erupted in China over a "zero tolerance" policy for the coronavirus, which the authorities have adhered to since 2020. After that, the National Health Commission agreed to ease the restrictions. The abrupt lifting of measures led to a new outbreak of the disease: in December, almost 250 million people in China were infected with COVID-19, BLOOMBERG reported. The authorities did not confirm this information: according to official data, 3.7 thousand new cases of coronavirus were detected in the country on December 22, and the total number of confirmed cases since the beginning of the pandemic has reached 393 thousand. Then the country stopped publishing daily incidence data.

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While China has relaxed anti-coronavirus measures, other countries have begun to require tests from visitors from China or have introduced other control measures.