Vietnam begins Covid-19 vaccination drive without China-made shots

Hanoi resident Hoang Cam Hang, 25, is looking forward to her Covid-19 vaccination. Vietnam, which has among the lowest total reported coronavirus infections in Southeast Asia, will launch its immunisation drive on Monday with over 117,000 doses of the vaccine developed by British-Swedish pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca.


The programme will initially be conducted in 18 hospitals treating coronavirus patients, and in areas with higher infection numbers, Vietnam's health minister Nguyen Thanh Long said on Friday.


But while Hang - who has a background in health care and works for a health care non-profit group - said she would confidently take any vaccine approved by Vietnamese regulators, one made in China would be her last resort.


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"Besides what's available in the public health care system, the next option for me would be the vaccine from Russia, then the US, then the one from China if there is no other choice," she said, adding that her decision was based on their reported efficacy rates.


Scepticism over Sinovac jab as Philippines rolls out vaccination programme

The AstraZeneca vaccine has an average efficacy rate of 70 per cent, according to various trials, while Russia's Sputnik V vaccine provides around 92 per cent protection, according to late-stage trial results published in medical journal The Lancet. In Israel, the first real-world test of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine that Vietnam has also approved for emergency use found that it was 94 per cent effective.


In comparison, China's Sinopharm has said the vaccine made by its Wuhan subsidiary has a 72.5 per cent efficacy rate. Beijing-based Sinovac's vaccine was found to be 50.6 per cent effective in a trial involving health care workers in Brazil, but over 91 per cent effective in a much smaller trial conducted in Turkey. The World Health Organization's threshold for Covid-19 vaccine effectiveness is 50 per cent, though each country has their own cut-off.

Hang's stance reflects Vietnam's move to steer clear of Chinese vaccines, despite Beijing's pledge to make vaccines a global public good and offer priority access to developing countries - it is the only country among the 10-member Asean bloc that has yet to publicly state if it will use Chinese-made vaccines.


Indonesia in January launched a mass vaccination programme with Sinovac vaccines and has administered nearly 3.2 million doses as of Wednesday, while it is recruiting 4,000 volunteers to participate in a late-stage clinical trial for the Covid-19 vaccine manufactured by China's Anhui Zhifei Longcom Biopharmaceutical.


Malaysia has approved the use of Sinovac vaccines, while Singapore has taken delivery of a shipment but has not approved them for use. Brunei has received a donation of Sinopharm vaccines, while Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and the Philippines have begun using either Sinopharm or Sinovac vaccines. Myanmar was promised a Chinese vaccine by Foreign Minister Wang Yi during his visit to Myanmar in January, although no deliveries have been made.


Chinese dams, pollution give Vietnamese the Mekong Delta blues

Nguyen Phuong Linh, associate director with global consultancy firm Control Risks, said China's vaccine diplomacy had failed with Vietnam mainly because of anti-China sentiments among the public.


Vietnamese leaders, who had been enjoying strong support for successfully managing Covid-19 - the country of 98 million has recorded over 2,500 Covid-19 infections and 35 related deaths - would not want to risk losing such favour, Linh said. "From the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, the virus has been widely reported in Vietnam as originally coming from China. Since then, the anti-China sentiments, which were already strong, have shown no sign of weakening."


Huong Le Thu, a senior analyst and Southeast Asia project lead at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, a think tank co-funded by the US and Australian governments, said Hanoi had assessed the vaccines based on factors including efficacy rates, medical credibility and affordability.


A high level of trust in the vaccines was needed in order for populations to agree to be vaccinated, she said. Le Thu added that in the early days of the pandemic, China did not come to Vietnam with offers of personal protective equipment as it had to other Southeast Asian neighbours, which showed a level of politicisation in Beijing's "Covid-19 diplomacy" - and which Hanoi had taken into consideration.


Former communist allies Vietnam and China have always had an uneasy diplomatic relationship, with the Vietnamese retaining simmering antipathy towards the Chinese that stems from a centuries-long Chinese occupation that ended in the year 939, and the 1979 border war between the countries that Beijing started in response to Hanoi invading Cambodia a year earlier.


These sentiments have been fuelled by an ongoing territorial dispute in the South China Sea between China, Vietnam and three other Asean countries, and Beijing's activities on the Mekong River that have affected Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) downstream, including Vietnam.


What if vaccines aren't enough for herd immunity?

While Hanoi has been careful to manage its ties with Beijing, given that China is Vietnam's largest trading partner and second-biggest export market after the United States, bilateral tensions have resurfaced in recent months. For example, diplomatic observers said it was telling that China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi visited nine Asean states over a period of a few months before the inauguration of Joe Biden as the new US President in January - except for Vietnam.


Besides using the AstraZeneca vaccine and approving the Pfizer-BioNTech and Sputnik V vaccines for emergency use, Vietnam is also developing four home-grown vaccines, with human trials having started for two of them. One of these, the Nano Covax vaccine by Ho Chi Minh City-based Nanogen Pharmaceutical Biotechnology, is in its second phase of human trials and is expected to be approved for emergency use by the middle of the year.

Vietnam - which has secured 60 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine through the Covax Facility, the World Health Organization initiative looking to ensure equitable access to vaccines - aims to inoculate 80 per cent of its population or about 72 million people to achieve herd immunity.


According to the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), Singapore - which has a population of about 5.7 million people - might achieve widespread vaccination coverage by the end of this year, becoming the first country in Southeast Asia to do so. The EIU estimates that Vietnam could take six months longer, while Thailand, Malaysia and China might take until the end of next year; Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia and the Philippines might only have inoculated most of their citizens in early 2023.


Vu Minh Hoang, a visiting faculty member in diplomatic history and Vietnamese studies at Fulbright University Vietnam, said there was "no concrete evidence that the Vietnamese leadership consciously avoided Sinovac due to concerns about public distrust of China".


In fact, he said, it was unclear to him if the Sinovac vaccine had even been made available to Vietnam or whether Hanoi had considered it.


He said even if Vietnam could achieve mass vaccination on its own, without using any of the China-made vaccines, it would still be in the collective interest for China to offer doses to its neighbours.


"At the end of the day, a shot given anywhere in the world helps reduce contagion for everyone," Hoang said.


"We are all in this together, and nationalist competition for vaccinations is unhelpful."

越南开始没有中国制造的Covid-19疫苗接种

25岁的河内居民Hoang Cam Hang期待她的Covid-19疫苗接种。越南是东南亚报告的冠状病毒感染总数最低的国家之一,它将在周一开始免疫接种行动,其中将提供超过117,000剂由英瑞制药巨头阿斯利康(AstraZeneca)研制的疫苗。

越南卫生部长阮清隆(Nguyen Thanh Long)周五说,该计划最初将在治疗冠状病毒患者的18家医院以及感染人数较高的地区进行。

但是,尽管拥有医疗保健背景并为医疗保健非营利组织工作的杭航表示,她有信心服用越南监管机构批准的任何疫苗,但在中国制造的疫苗将是她的最后选择。

从我们的《全球影响力》时事通讯中获取有关源自中国的重大新闻的最新见解和分析。

她说:“除了公共医疗体系中可用的疫苗以外,对我来说,下一个选择是从俄罗斯,然后是美国,再从中国选择如果没有其他选择的疫苗,”她补充说,她的决定基于他们报告的有效率。

菲律宾推出疫苗接种计划后,人们对Sinovac戳刺表示怀疑

根据各种试验显示,阿斯利康疫苗的平均有效率为70%,而俄罗斯的人造卫星V疫苗则可提供约92%的保护,根据医学杂志《柳叶刀》上发表的后期试验结果。在以色列,越南也批准用于紧急用途的辉瑞/ BioNTech疫苗的首次真实世界测试发现,这种疫苗的有效率为94%。

相比之下,中国国药集团表示,其武汉子公司生产的疫苗的有效率为72.5%。在巴西进行的一项涉及医护人员的试验中,发现北京的Sinovac的疫苗有效率为50.6%,但在土耳其进行的规模较小的试验中,有效率为91%以上。在世界卫生组织的对Covid-19疫苗的有效性阈值是50%的,虽然每个国家都有自己的截止。

杭的立场反映了越南为避免使用中国疫苗而采取的行动,尽管北京方面承诺将使疫苗成为全球公共利益并向发展中国家提供优先使用权-这是东盟十国集团中唯一尚未公开声明的国家。将使用中国制造的疫苗。

印度尼西亚在一月份启动了使用Sinovac疫苗的大规模疫苗接种计划,截至周三,该疫苗已施用了近320万剂,同时它正在招募4,000名志愿者参加中国安徽智飞隆康生物制药有限公司生产的Covid-19疫苗的后期临床试验。 。

马来西亚已批准使用Sinovac疫苗,而新加坡已接收了一批货物,但尚未批准使用。文莱已经收到了捐赠的国药疫苗,而泰国,老挝,柬埔寨和菲律宾已经开始使用国药或国药疫苗。外交部长王毅在一月份访问缅甸时曾向缅甸许诺要向中国提供疫苗,尽管尚未交付。

中国的水坝,污染给越南带来了湄公河三角洲的忧郁

全球咨询公司Control Risks的副董事Nguyen Phuong Linh表示,中国的疫苗外交与越南失败,主要是因为公众对中国的反感。

Linh说,越南领导人一直对成功管理Covid-19给予了大力支持,该国有9800万人记录了2500例Covid-19感染和35例相关死亡,该国不愿冒险失去这种支持。“从Covid-19大流行开始,越南就已经广泛报道了这种病毒,最初是从中国来的。从那时起,已经很强烈的反华情绪没有减弱的迹象。”

由美国和澳大利亚政府共同资助的智囊机构澳大利亚战略政策研究所高级分析师和东南亚项目负责人Huong Le Thu说,河内已根据功效,医疗信誉和负担能力等因素对疫苗进行了评估。

她说,需要疫苗高度信任,以便人群同意接受疫苗接种。勒图补充说,在大流行初期,中国没有像其他东南亚邻国那样向越南提供个人防护装备,这在北京的“ Covid-19外交”中显示出一定程度的政治化,而且河内已考虑在内。

前共产党盟国越南和中国一直保持着不安的外交关系,越南人对中国人一直怀有深深的反感,这源于长达数个世纪的中国占领,这一占领始于939年,而1979年北京之间的边界战争开始了作为对一年前河内入侵柬埔寨的回应。

中国,越南和其他三个东盟国家之间在南中国海不断发生的领土争端,以及北京在湄公河上的活动影响了包括越南在内的东南亚国家联盟(东盟),这些情绪加剧了这种情绪。

如果疫苗不足以实现畜群免疫怎么办?

尽管河内一直谨慎处理与北京的关系,但鉴于中国是越南的最大贸易伙伴和仅次于美国的第二大出口市场,近几个月来双边紧张局势再次浮出水面。例如,外交观察员说,这是在告诉中国外交部长王毅在1月乔·拜登就任美国新总统就职前的几个月内访问了9个东盟国家,但越南除外。

越南除了使用阿斯利康疫苗并批准了辉瑞-BioNTech和Sputnik V疫苗用于紧急用途外,还正在开发四种本土生产的疫苗,其中两种已经开始进行人体试验。其中之一是位于胡志明市的Nanogen制药生物技术公司的Nano Covax疫苗,目前处于人体试验的第二阶段,预计将在今年中期批准用于紧急用途。

越南-已通过世界卫生组织旨在确保公平获得疫苗的Covax设施获得了6000万剂阿斯利康疫苗的接种,旨在为80%的人口或约7200万人接种疫苗,以实现畜群免疫。

根据经济学人智库(EIU)的数据,新加坡-人口约570万-到今年年底可能会实现广泛的疫苗接种覆盖,成为东南亚第一个这样做的国家。EIU估计越南可能要花六个月的时间,而泰国,马来西亚和中国可能要等到明年年底。缅甸,柬埔寨,老挝,印度尼西亚和菲律宾可能只在2023年初接种了大多数公民的疫苗。

越南富布赖特大学外交历史和越南研究系客座教授吴明晃说,“没有具体证据表明,由于担心中国公众不信任,越南领导人有意识地避开了中华科”。

他说,实际上,尚不清楚他是否曾向越南提供过Sinovac疫苗,或者河内是否曾考虑过这种疫苗。

他说,即使越南不使用任何中国制造的疫苗就可以自行实现大规模疫苗接种,对中国向其邻国提供疫苗仍然符合集体利益。

霍恩说:“归根结底,在世界任何地方开枪有助于减少每个人的传染病。”

“我们都在一起,民族主义的疫苗接种竞争是无益的。”


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