China will approve the BioNTech vaccine against Covid-19 for use by foreign residents of the country, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced Friday, after meeting Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
If confirmed, this will be the first messenger RNA inoculation against the novel coronavirus approved by the Asian country, albeit for the exclusive use of foreign residents only.
However, in a news conference, Scholz said he had spoken with Xi Jinping about the best way to approve the vaccine for use by the entire population in China, and suggested a collaboration between Chinese health authorities and regulators from the European Medicines Agency.
“This is a first step,” Scholz said. “There will be an acceleration of the approval process. I was assured of that,” he added.
China maintains a covid-19 ‘zero cases’ strategy, which includes blocking entire neighborhoods and cities and isolating all positive cases and their direct contacts, with a view to suppressing outbreaks of the novel coronavirus.
Beijing has not approved any foreign-developed vaccines, using only domestic inoculations, which use traditional inactivated virus technology but are considered less effective, especially against new strains of Covid-19.
In December 2020, BioNTech agreed to partner with Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical Group Co. to deliver 100 million doses to China by 2021, pending
Source: DN
