EFE.- President Xi Jinping announced that China will donate 100 million doses of covid vaccines to developing countries before the end of this year, in addition to those it has provided to the international initiative Covax for equitable vaccination worldwide.
Xi made the announcement Thursday during the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) videoconference summit, local media reported today.
According to official data from last August, China had provided 770 million doses, the majority through exports, to more than 100 countries in the world, including 18 Latin American countries.
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China has not detailed how many of those doses of vaccines correspond to donations, although the director general of International Economic Affairs of the Foreign Ministry, Wang Xiaolong, assured that they are “tens of millions”.
On July 12, the program Covax reached an agreement with the Chinese pharmaceutical companies Sinopharm and Sinovac to distribute 110 million doses globally until October and the possibility of an additional 440 million in the last quarter of 2021 and the first half of 2022.
In addition, China has pledged to deliver $ 100 million to COVAX this year.
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During the BRICS summit, which was hosted by Indian President Narendra Modi, Xi advocated “deepening cooperation” with the rest of the group members to “tackle common challenges,” among which he mentioned climate change, global fight against the Covid-19 pandemic and the protection of the global order based on international laws.
In the economic field, Xi declared that the BRICS should “promote an economic growth based on innovation” that can be beneficial “for all countries”, while He called on his counterparts to protect the multilateral trade order promoted by the World Trade Organization (WTO).
Although both China, Russia and India have interests in the Central Asian country, Xi Jinping did not mention Afghanistan in his speech, but he did ask the members of the group to coordinate their positions on international and regional affairs and to strengthen their cooperation in the field of security.
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Indian President Narendra Modi and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin did refer specifically to Afghanistan.
According to the Chinese media, Modi pointed out that “Afghanistan must not become a threat or a source of drug trafficking and terrorism for its neighboring countries” and Putin declared that it remains to be seen how “the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan will affect to regional security ”.
Xi, who will host next year’s meeting, expressed his hope that BRICS will adopt cooperation focused on results and that the group “regain vitality and vigor.”
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