{"id":11330,"date":"2021-01-17T18:59:22","date_gmt":"2021-01-17T10:59:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/journal.com.ph\/?p=11330"},"modified":"2021-01-17T20:44:00","modified_gmt":"2021-01-17T12:44:00","slug":"china-to-donate-half-a-million-vaccines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journal.com.ph\/china-to-donate-half-a-million-vaccines\/","title":{"rendered":"China to donate half a million vaccines"},"content":{"rendered":"

MANILA, Jan 16, 2021 (AFP)<\/strong> – Beijing’s top diplomat pledged Saturday to donate half a million coronavirus vaccine shots to the Philippines, Manila officials said — despite growing resistance there to Chinese-made jabs over concerns about their efficacy.<\/p>\n

\"Rodrigo<\/a>
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte (C) listening to Philippine Foreign Secretary Teodoro Locsin (R) as they welcome China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi (L) during a courtesy call at the Malacanang Palace in Manila.
Richard MADELO \/ Presidential Photo Department \/ AFP<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

President Rodrigo Duterte’s administration is scrambling to lock in supplies of Covid-19 vaccines for the country’s 110 million people, after being criticized for being too slow off the mark in the global race to procure the drugs.<\/p>\n

Among other deals, the Philippines has already agreed to buy 25 million doses of Chinese company Sinovac’s Coronavac, despite the jab not having been approved by regulators in China.<\/p>\n

It is not clear which vaccine China will donate, and whether the donation is part of that earlier deal; the Chinese embassy in Manila did not respond to AFP’s request for comment.<\/p>\n

China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi told his counterpart of the intended donation when he was in Manila on Saturday, the Philippines foreign ministry said.<\/p>\n

The news follows similar announcements from other countries in the region earlier this week — Cambodia said it would receive one million free doses from Beijing on Friday, after Myanmar was set to get 300,000.<\/p>\n

Duterte has actively sought closer ties with Beijing since taking power in 2016, and has defended Chinese vaccines in the face of widespread misgivings over their effectiveness.<\/p>\n

Although trials in Turkey found Coronavac to be 91.25 percent effective, other, more robust trials in Brazil only demonstrated an efficacy rate of around 50 percent.<\/p>\n

Duterte came under fire last month after he revealed that members of his security team had been given a jab made by another Chinese company, Sinopharm, even though it had not been approved for use.<\/p>\n

Nearly half a million people have been infected with the virus in the Philippines, with almost 10,000 fatalities.<\/p>\n

Health officials have warned of a possible spike in cases following the Christmas holidays, religious parades and a confirmed case of the more infectious strain first identified in Britain. cgm\/amj\/reb Agence France-Presse<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MANILA, Jan 16, 2021 (AFP) – Beijing’s top diplomat pledged Saturday to donate half a million coronavirus vaccine shots to the Philippines, Manila officials said — despite growing resistance there to Chinese-made jabs over concerns about their efficacy. President Rodrigo Duterte’s administration is scrambling to lock in supplies of Covid-19 vaccines for the country’s 110 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7108,"featured_media":11331,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":"Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte (2nd R) welcoming China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi (L) during a courtesy call at the Malacanang Palace in Manila.\r\nRichard MADELO \/ Presidential Photo Department \/ AFP","source_text":"","source_url":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journal.com.ph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11330"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journal.com.ph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journal.com.ph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journal.com.ph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7108"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journal.com.ph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11330"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journal.com.ph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11330\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journal.com.ph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11331"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journal.com.ph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journal.com.ph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journal.com.ph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}