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The European Union (EU) has agreed to offer free Covid-19 vaccines to China to assist Beijing in dealing with rising Covid cases in the country, according to the Financial Times (FT) on Jan. 3.

The outbreak of cases was caused by the country's decision to abruptly end its stringent zero-Covid policy in early December 2022.

There has been growing concern on the internal Covid surge, with new travel restrictions and border controls being imposed on travellers from China by various countries such as Japan and South Korea.

EU offers to donate surplus vaccines

The offer to provide free vaccines for China was made ahead of official talks between EU government health officials which will be held on Wednesday, Jan. 4.

The officials are expected to come up with a coordinated response to the outbreak of Covid cases in China, reported Reuters. 

FT wrote that health commissioner Stella Kyriakides had reportedly contacted her Chinese counterparts “to offer solidarity and support [...] through variant-adapted EU vaccine donations”, according to an anonymous official.

EU member states possess surplus stocks of vaccine doses as a result of large orders placed with vaccine developers under long-term contracts. The officials said that these surplus stocks could be shipped to China for their use. 

Kyriakides is reportedly calling for a meeting with various pharmaceutical companies to work out details of existing contracts. 

83 per cent of adults in the EU have been fully vaccinated and more than 1.7 billion vaccine doses have been administered. Up to 4.2 billion doses have also been secured in contracts with eight vaccine developers, FT reported.

Reliance on domestically-produced vaccines

China has depended exclusively on domestically produced vaccines Sinovac and Sinopharm, which use the inactivated virus to elicit an immune response.

The country has not approved the use of any foreign vaccines, with Chinese President Xi Jinping purportedly being unwilling to accept Western-made vaccines.

Recently, Chinese mainlanders have reportedly been heading to Macau to get western-developed mRNA vaccines, while others are looking to do so in Hong Kong once border restrictions ease.

Both special administrative regions offer Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines.

No reply from China yet

On Jan. 1, China’s mission to the EU said in a statement that China has “over 90 per cent of the population fully vaccinated” and that “more than 3.4 billion Covid-19 vaccine doses” have been administered.

It also stated that the country had been ramping up booster vaccinations especially among the elderly and that new travel restrictions imposed on travellers from China were "unjustified".

Currently, China has yet to respond to the EU's offer, according to FT.

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Top images via China News Service & japatino via Getty