China COVID-19 Vaccine Tracker

(No longer being updated since December 28, 2022) 

Our follow-up project – China’s Emerging Global Vaccine Footprint – looks at how China and other countries are supporting local vaccine manufacturing in the post-COVID era.

Since the outbreak of the pandemic, China has committed to making its COVID-19 vaccines a global public good. On multiple occasions, high-level Chinese officials have declared that China is fulfilling this pledge by exporting and donating its COVID-19 vaccines to as many countries that it can. This has generated a great deal of interest and discussion amongst experts from various fields. As an independent, mission-driven consultancy that tracks China’s impact on global health, Bridge Consulting aims to examine and offer a comprehensive picture of China’s vaccine outreach, hopefully enabling more informed discussions on this issue worldwide.

Read more about our methodology here.

1.853B (+0M) DOSES SOLD

328M (+0M) DOSES DONATED

1.653B (+0M) DOSES DELIVERED

Updated as of 13:00 pm (GMT+8), December  28, 2022.

This tracker is no longer being updated.

It includes all bilateral and multilateral sales, donations, and deliveries that have been officially reported through publicly accessible sources.

 Total and Weekly Tracker Highlights

    • Africa Update: Total Sales – 126.4M (+0) | Total Pledged Donations – 152.8M (+0) | Total Deliveries – 153.2M (+0)
    • Asia Pacific Update: Total Sales – 944.9M (+0) | Total Pledged Donations – 143M (+0) | Total Deliveries – 909.8M (+0)
    • Europe Update: Total Sales – 123.5M (+0) | Total Pledged Donations – 5.6M (+0) | Total Deliveries – 59.5M (+0)
    • Latin America Update*: Total Sales – 397.9M (+o) | Total Pledged Donations – 13.4M (+0) | Total Deliveries – 296.8M (o)
    • COVAX Update*: Total Sales – 259.8M (+0) | Total Deliveries – 234.0M (+0)

    *Weekly updates in brackets. 

See #ChinaCOVID19Tracker on Twitter

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China’s Vaccines Around the World

This interactive map tracks the vaccine sales and donations that China and Chinese vaccine developers have made. It also tracks the number of delivered vaccines.

Timeline of Vaccines Delivered by China

Multiple global developments have impacted the amount of Chinese COVID-19 vaccine deliveries over time. The timeline illustrates the deliveries made to various countries since the beginning of the pandemic and below are some notable events since China started exporting COVID-19 vaccines in 2020.

Notable Events Impacting China’s Vaccine Delivery:

More

China’s Vaccines Across Regions

China has directly provided vaccines to four geographical regions – a total of 119 countries around the world. Out of these four regions, Asia Pacific has received the most significant number of Chinese vaccines, with 39 countries receiving vaccines from China. Latin America has received the second most considerable number of Chinese vaccines, though only 22 countries have received them. In contrast, while Africa has 48 countries receiving vaccines from China, the region has received few Chinese vaccines.

Take a look at our slideshow below to see deliveries, sales, and donations of Chinese vaccines by Geographical Region. 

Please press the arrows below to alternate between graphs.

Top 10 Doses Delivered, Purchased, and Donated

Here is a slideshow that shows the countries that have received the most doses through deliveries, purchases, and donations

Please press the arrows below to alternate between tables. 

China’s Vaccines in Africa

As part of the South-South Cooperation, China pledged in late February 2021 to provide COVID-19 vaccines to 19 African countries. Following the 8th FOCAC Ministerial Meeting that took place on 30 November 2021, China made a new pledge to provide 1 billion doses of vaccines to Africa, including 600 million doses as donation and 400 million doses to be provided through such means as joint production by Chinese companies and relevant African countries. To date, 47 African countries have been receiving vaccines from China. While the pace of these deals has picked up on several occasions, China’s total number of vaccines delivered to Africa has constantly remained low.

Out of the 186 million doses sold and 80 million pledged donations to Africa, China has delivered 125 million, of which 31 million have been donations. However, issues of affordability and accessibility are particularly critical for African countries with limited financial resources at their disposal. Alongside bilateral agreements, Africa has also been receiving vaccines through the COVAX initiative.

China’s Vaccines in Latin America

Latin America has received the second-largest quantity of Chinese vaccines, despite only 22 countries having vaccine deals with China. Like Africa, Latin America and China are also working under the South-South Cooperation and the Belt and Road Initiative. While China has donated only 12 million doses to the region, it has sold 396 million doses, and to date, delivered 293 million doses. China also provides the region with active ingredients to make Chinese and other vaccines, such as the AstraZeneca vaccine.

Latin America plays an especially significant role to Chinese vaccine developer Sinovac, which has sold 230 million doses (out of 848 million doses sold globally) to 8 Latin American countries.

China’s Vaccines in Asia Pacific

Asia has received the most significant number of Chinese vaccines out of all regions in donations and sales. Thus far, the continent has received delivery of 890 million doses, out of the 938 million sold and 141 million donated. 97 million of the delivered doses have been donations.

In recent months, there has been a shift in the perception of Chinese vaccines in the region as local cases surge despite healthcare workers and citizens being inoculated with these vaccines. These surges have been attributed to the rise of the Delta and Omicron variants, which is more contagious, and the latter is able to evade immune protection from vaccines as well. In light of this, some countries are considering administering booster shots or mixing Chinese vaccines with other vaccine brands to enhance immunity, especially for vulnerable populations like the elderly and frontline workers.

  • In November 2021, President Xi pledged an additional 150 million doses to be provided to the ASEAN bloc as well as $5 million to its COVID-19 response fund.
  • In January 2022, at a virtual summit celebrating the 30th anniversary of diplomatic relations between China and five Central Asian countries (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan), President Xi pledged an additional 50 million vaccine doses to be donated to the region.
  • In March 2022, at the 48th session of the Council of Foreign Ministers of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in Pakistan, Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi pledged to provide an additional 300 million vaccine doses to Islamic countries and support the OIC’s member countries in Africa fighting the pandemic.

China’s Vaccines in Europe

As a region, Europe has received the fewest number of deliveries of Chinese vaccines. Thus far, only 59 million doses of Chinese vaccines have been delivered to 10 European countries, of which 5 million are donations. However, altogether China has sold 123 million doses to the region, most of which came from Turkey who penned a deal in November 2020 to buy 100 million doses of Sinovac. Turkey has redistributed doses via donations and sales to Bosnia and Herzegovina, Azerbaijan, Albania, and more.

One possible factor why Chinese vaccines are not widely used in European countries is because they have not yet received approval from the European Medicines Agency (EMA). The EMA is an agency of the European Union in charge of the evaluation and supervision of medicinal products. However, national medical regulators may authorize the vaccines for emergency use which some Central and Eastern European countries have done.

China’s Multilateral Vaccine Contributions

In recent months, Chinese vaccines have been endorsed by an increasing list of international organizations, making these vaccines available through multilateral streams.

June 30, 2021. Gavi announced that it had signed an advance purchase agreement (APA) with Clover Biopharmaceuticals for its SCB-2019 protein-based adjuvanted vaccine, the R&D of which is funded by (CEPI), making up to 414 million doses available to participants of the COVAX Facility.

July 12, 2021. Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, announced that it had signed APAs with Sinopharm for its BBIBP-CorV inactivated virus vaccine and Sinovac for its CoronaVac inactivated virus vaccine. These agreements made 110 million doses immediately available to participants of the COVAX Facility, with options for additional doses, providing up to 550 million doses to the program.

February 8, 2022. CEPI, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, announced that it will expand its collaboration with Shanghai Zerun Bio and its parent company Walvax to advance the development of a COVID-19 variant vaccine. CEPI will invest up to an additional US$8.15 million to support a Phase I/II clinical trial in Mali which will evaluate the safety and immunogenicity of Zerun Bio’s prototype and multi-variant vaccine candidates.

March 22, 2022. The BRICS Vaccine R&D Center was launched as a joint effort between the five BRICS countries, and Sinovac took a leading role as the Chinese branch.

Chinese leaders have repeatedly emphasized that China wants to promote multilateral cooperation in the global response to COVID-19. China’s increasing participation in vital multilateral mechanisms is an encouraging step forward in fulfilling its promise of making Chinese COVID-19 vaccines a global public good and promoting multilateralism, on top of its many bilateral vaccine distribution deals.

COVAX is a partnership with CEPI, Gavi, the WHO, and UNICEF (a delivery partner). This initiatives has widened access to COVID-19 vaccines in an equitable manner, and also has improved the development and manufacturing of these vaccines. Read more about the initiative here.

China’s Vaccines by Manufacturers

Sinopharm and Sinovac have been the most prominent manufacturers of Chinese COVID-19 vaccines sold and donated worldwide. Outside of these two, CanSino and Anhui Zhifei have also provided vaccines, though fewer.

Sinovac remains the leading supplier of vaccine sales by China, having sold 848 million doses and supplied vaccines to 48 countries in total. On the other hand, Sinopharm has been the leading supplier of vaccine donations from China, supplying 103 million doses of donated vaccines to 79 countries.

Take a look at our slideshow to see sales and deliveries of manufacturers. Please press the arrows below to alternate between graphs.

Sinovac – CoronaVac COVID-19 Vaccine

On June 1, 2021, the World Health Organization officially listed the inactivated COVID-19 vaccine developed by Chinese biopharmaceutical company Sinovac Biotech Ltd. for emergency use. This is the second Chinese COVID-19 vaccine to receive this approval after the inactivated Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccine was approved for emergency use in May 2021.

Sinopharm – Beijing Bio-Institute of Biological Products Co-Ltd. (BBIBP) COVID-19 Vaccine

On May 7, the World Health Organization officially listed the inactivated COVID-19 vaccine developed by Beijing Bio-Institute of Biological Products Co-Ltd. (BBIBP) under the China National Pharmaceutical Group Corporation (Sinopharm) for emergency use, marking a significant milestone as the first Chinese COVID-19 vaccine to receive this approval.

CanSino – CONVIDECIA Ad5-nCoV-S recombinant vaccine

On May 19, 2022, the World Health Organization officially listed the CanSino (CONVIDECIA) vaccine developed by CanSino Biologics Inc., the Beijing Institute of Biotechnology, and the Academy of Military Medical Sciences for emergency use. This is the third vaccine developed by China to receive this approval. CanSino uses protein-coding technology delivered to the body by adenoviruses to create antibodies that fight COVID-19. This differs from the Sinovac and Sinopharm vaccines, which use the inactivated COVID-19 virus to generate an immune response against the disease.

Overseas Manufacturers of Chinese Vaccines

In addition to vaccine deliveries, Chinese COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers have been partnering with various developing countries to build up their local vaccine production capacities. At the Global Health Summit 2021, Chinese President Xi Jinping reiterated China’s support for its vaccine developers to transfer technologies to other developing countries and to carry out joint production. A total of 15 countries currently host vaccine joint production facilities: Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Pakistan, UAE, Uzbekistan, Serbia, Brazil, Chile, Columbia and Mexico.

Additional countries have only signed agreements but have not yet indicated production of vaccines or construction of vaccine facilities: Hungary, Russia, Bangladesh, Argentina, Turkey and Sri Lanka.

More Details on Overseas Manufacturers of Chinese Vaccines:

 

  • Manufacturing of Chinese COVID-19 vaccines has started or is about to start for these countries.
  • Several Chinese vaccine manufacturers have initial stage agreements (MOUs, license to produce vaccines, public statements of intent) with these countries, however have yet to deliver concrete results. We will continue to monitor the situation with these agreements.
    • Argentina. In May 2021, Sinopharm and Argentinian pharmaceutical Sinergium Biotech agreed to produce vaccines in Argentina with discussions on technology transfer to follow. Political negotiations were initiated between the two countries regarding production, however no further updates have been announced.
    • Bangladesh. Under a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed between the government, China’s Sinopharm and Bangladesh’s Incepta pharmaceutical firm in August 2021, the local vaccine producer will supply five million doses of the vaccine a month from its plant in Savar. So far, production has yet to begin.
    • Hungary. On September 10, 2021, Hungary’s government signed a letter of intent with Sinopharm executives to develop the required infrastructure within the next 10 months to produce the Chinese COVID-19 vaccine. No further updates regarding this have been announced. 
    • Nigeria. Cui Jianchun, Ambassador of the People’s Republic of China to Nigeria, announced on December 14, 2021, that China and Nigeria are currently undergoing talks regarding a potential collaboration to domestically produce Chinese COVID-19 vaccines.
    • Russia. In 2020, CanSino carried out a phase 3 trial of its vaccine in partnership with Petrovax in Russia, and in August 2021, Petrovax agreed to partner with the developer to carry out local manufacturing. No further updates have been announced.
    • Sri Lanka. In August 2021, Sinovac agreed to set up a manufacturing plant in Hambantota, Sri Lanka, with an initial plan to produce 13 million doses of the vaccine through Kelun Lifesciences. No further updates have been announced.
    • Turkey. Turkey was one of the first five countries to receive a license to locally manufacture vaccines from Sinovac in May 2021.  No further updates have been announced.
    • Uganda. Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni met with Sinovac’s Ugandan representative and team in May 2022 to discuss plans for Sinovac to establish a vaccine and biotechnology centre in the country.

Notes

Additional information on procurements of Chinese vaccines:

More

Methodology

This vaccine tracker is based entirely on data from reliable publicly accessible sources collected and compiled by Bridge Consulting with the help of Global Health Strategies (Brazil) and is updated every Monday by 7:00 PM (BJT GMT+8).

Where do we get our data?

Bridge collects and verifies data on Chinese vaccine sales, donations and deliveries every week. We source all our data from reliable, publicly accessible sources such as official government press releases, credible international and local news sources, and social media posts by government offices and verified officials.

How do you define ‘sales’, ‘donations’, ‘deliveries’?

Vaccine sales refers to the contractually committed vaccine doses that recipient countries have commercially purchased from Chinese vaccine developers.

Vaccine donations refers to the doses that a Chinese entity (government, vaccine developer, Red Cross etc.) has pledged to donate to a recipient country.

Vaccine deliveries refers to the doses that have physically been shipped from China to the recipient country.

How are countries and regions defined?

Our data is compiled and organized by country according to the United Nations’ M49 standard.

Why does our data change sometimes?

With the help of Global Health Strategies (Brazil), we constantly review our data for irregularities and correct them whenever new information becomes available.

Why does our data differ from other sources?

All our data is sourced manually by our team from publicly available sources. If you find that we have missed out on something, please let us know at vaccinetracker@bridgebeijing.com.