Berlin confirms contacts with Beijing for supply of Biontech-Pfizer vaccine
Germany could help China solve the crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic, which this weekend sparked the most serious popular protests in the country since the suppression of the Tianamen revolution in 1989. The government led by federal chancellor Olaf Scholz is in direct contact with the Chinese Executive for the possible supply of the vaccine against Covid-19 developed by the German laboratory Biontech in collaboration with the US pharmaceutical company Pfizer, official spokesman for the German government, Steffen Hebestreit, revealed on Monday. During his recent visit to Beijing, the German top man already received permission from the Chinese authorities so that foreigners residing in that country can be vaccinated with Biontech’s product.
Since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, the People’s Republic of China has enforced a strict policy of restrictions and confinement, completely isolating entire cities of millions and forcing all citizens to stay at home. Despite this ‘zero covid’ policy, China is currently suffering the worst wave of the disease, which reached a new maximum level of 40,000 new daily infections this Monday. German experts believe that China should once and for all change its strategy to fight the pandemic and launch a mass vaccination campaign by abandoning vaccines developed by Chinese pharmaceutical companies that have proven ineffective.
“Regardless of their ideologies, the Chinese authorities must provide their population with the best vaccines currently available,” said Timo Ulrichs, professor of Global Health at Akkon Higher School of Human Sciences in Berlin. These are not Chinese vaccines, but Western mRNA-based products, which have sufficiently demonstrated their effectiveness, the expert emphasized. After a broad vaccination campaign, which should start with the high-risk groups, China could gradually relax its strict measures to suppress the pandemic, although this process will take many months, as has happened in Europe, Ulrichs said.
The professor stressed that if China decided to make a radical turn in its policy by abruptly ending preventive measures, but without launching a vaccination campaign, it would risk a worsening of the situation. “The virus would hit a population that has practically no immunity” and as a result, massive infections would occur, saturating the health system and causing numerous illnesses and deaths.
Source: La Verdad
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