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 million people, after being criticised for being too slow off the mark in the global race to procure the drugs.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Nearly half a million people have been infected with the virus in the Philippines, with almost 10,000 fatalities.

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.

Serbia gets Chinese-made Sinopharm jabs
Belgrade (AFP) Jan 16, 2021 –

Serbia became one of the first European countries to receive a Chinese-made Covid-19 vaccine on Saturday when one million doses of a jab produced by Sinopharm arrived at Belgrade airport.

President Aleksandar Vucic posted a picture of himself on Instagram, standing next to the plane carrying the vaccine.

"We are proud of our friendship with China," he was quoted as saying by Beta news agency, telling reporters that he hoped to be inoculated with the Sinopharm vaccine in six or seven days.

After Pfizer-BioNTech and Russia's Sputnik V, Sinopharm's is the third coronavirus vaccine to be used by the Balkan nation.

Once the Chinese vaccine gets a final approval by Serbia's medicines agency, vaccination could start on Sunday or Monday, health official Zoran Gojkovic said earlier.

The European Union-candidate country, which has also close economic and political ties with Moscow and Beijing, started vaccination with Pfizer-BioNTech jabs on December 24 and later imported Russian Sputnik V vaccines.

Sinopharm says its vaccine is 79 percent effective against the novel coronavirus, compared with rates of 95 percent and 94 percent respectively for the rival jabs made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna.

Another Chinese-made jab, Sinovac's CoronaVac, was rolled out in Turkey on Thursday, after tests there showed it to be 91.25 percent effective.

But more robust trials in Brazil demonstrated an efficacy rate of around 50 percent.

So far, some 20,500 people — residents of retirement homes and health sector employees — have been vaccinated in Serbia, a country with a population of seven million, the national immunisation team said Friday.

Serbia has registered nearly 370,000 infections and more than 3,700 deaths from the novel coronavirus.

'Friend' China to donate one million vaccine doses to Cambodia: PM
Phnom Penh (AFP) Jan 16, 2021 –

China will donate one million doses of its Sinovac coronavirus vaccine to Cambodia, the kingdom's strongman premier Hun Sen has said, thanking "friend" Beijing for its generosity.

Cambodia has long been a staunch ally of Beijing, receiving billions of dollars in soft loans and investment from China.

While many countries reacted early in the pandemic by closing its borders to Chinese travellers, Hun Sen refused, and even travelled to Beijing to meet with leader Xi Jinping in a show of solidarity.

The premier announced late Friday that China has offered to donate shots made by the firm Sinovac.

"Friend China is helping us with one million doses," Hun Sun said in an audio message on his official Facebook page, adding that the doses will vaccinate 500,000 people.

"To prevent the nation and people from being infected with this deadly virus, we have to use vaccines that were already used on Chinese leaders and millions of people… We cannot wait any longer."

The first people to get the jab would include frontline health workers, teachers, soldiers, the premier's bodyguards, and officials around the king, he said.

Sinovac's CoronaVac was rolled out in Turkey on Friday, after tests there showed it to be 91.25 percent effective.

But more robust trials in Brazil demonstrated an efficacy rate of around 50 percent — much lower than those of rival shots from Moderna, Pfizer-BioNTech and Oxford-AstraZeneca.

A third trial in Indonesia — where authorities this week kicked off a mass vaccination drive with CoronaVac shots — showed an efficacy of 65.3 percent.

Cambodia has appeared to do well in the pandemic so far, registering just 436 cases, though experts say the low numbers are likely due to a lack of testing.

Beijing has also offered to help another nation in the region, with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi promising this week to provide 300,000 doses to Myanmar.