By Murad Sezer and Peter Graff
ISTANBUL / LONDON (Reuters) – China is stealing a march on Western pharmacists in the COVID-19 vaccine race in developing countries, with Indonesia and Turkey launching huge campaigns with a Chinese injection this week, Brazil soon and until the EU member of Hungary signing up.
Scientists in some Western countries say that China has been too slow to publish test data. Public reports so far on how well their vaccines work have been inconsistent, which Chinese companies attribute to variations in methodology.
Still, countries with hundreds of millions of people desperate for a vaccine think China’s vaccines are good enough.
As Western pharmaceutical companies struggle to meet domestic demand, Beijing has shipped millions of doses around the world of CoronaVac, manufactured by Sinovac Biotech, and is also marketing a separate vaccine made by another company, Sinopharm.
Exports take place as China faces its own outbreak of infections, which has left more than 28 million people trapped. China administered 10 million doses of vaccine at home.
Although some studies on the Sinovac vaccine have reported lower efficacy rates than some Western products, the countries that buy them say they appear effective in preventing the most serious and deadly form of COVID-19.
Perhaps most importantly, they are also easy to administer, allowing for the rapid launch of large-scale programs to save lives and prevent health systems from being overwhelmed.
Turkey launched its program on Thursday with the injection of Sinovac and, in the late afternoon, said it had already vaccinated more than 200,000 people – more in a few hours than France managed in three weeks. Health professionals were the first.
“We spent about 10 months in white overalls, supporting people who fight for life. Health professionals know very well that this situation cannot be taken lightly and that the vaccine is necessary,” said surgeon general Nurettin Yiyit .
Hungary, which complained about the “outrageously” slow launch of vaccines purchased by the European Union on behalf of its 27 member states, struck a deal on Thursday to buy the Sinopharm vaccine. If approved, it will become the first EU country to authorize a Chinese vaccine.
‘BREAK THE CHAIN’
While all countries are likely to need more than one type of vaccine to meet demand, China was quick to send doses to countries at the bottom of the Western vaccine supply line.
Many developing countries may still have months to wait for the first vaccines.
Meanwhile, Turkey already has 3 million doses of the Sinovac vaccine in its stocks, and Brazil, 6 million doses. Brazil should start to inject them next week.
Indonesian President Joko Widodo was the first to get an injection of the Sinovac vaccine to launch one of the largest vaccine programs in the world on Wednesday. It expects to have 30 million doses of Sinovac by the end of March, out of an order of more than 122 million in 2022.
“Vaccination is important to break the chain of transmission of COVID-19 and give us protection and security to all Indonesians and help accelerate the economic recovery,” said the president.
The western company that competes most directly in developing countries with Sinovac so far is AstraZeneca, whose vaccine developed with the University of Oxford is also cheap and easy to deliver.
It will be the basis for the largest vaccine program of all, which India is due to launch on Saturday. More than 5 million doses were shipped across the country this week in preparation.
The Indian government says it will pay less than $ 3 per dose for the first 100 million injections, produced under license by the Indian Serum Institute.
Russia will launch a new expanded version of its vaccination program next week, using its own injection of Sputnik V, which is also heavily marketed in developing countries. He obtained approval in Argentina, Belarus and Serbia, although so far he has been slow to produce doses for export on a large scale.
Kirill Dmitriev, head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund that supports the vaccine, said in an interview at the Reuters NEXT conference that Russia will seek EU approval for the vaccine next month and hopes to gain 25% of the global market.
(Reporting by Murad Sezer, Mehmet Emin Caliskan and Ali Kucukgocmen in Istanbul, Tuvan Gumrukcu in Ankara, Gabriel Stargardter and Ricardo Brito in Rio de Janeiro, Stanley Widianto in Jakarta, Aditi Shah and Sachin Ravikumar in India, Andrew Osborn and Polina Ivanova in Moscow , Krisztina Than and Anita Komuves in Budapest; Editing by Josephine Mason and Andrew Cawthorne)