Coronavirus: why China has left its options open for WHO’s global vaccine plan

The deadline has passed for China to join a World Health Organization scheme to equitably distribute Covid-19 vaccines around the globe, as Beijing instead makes its own offers for shots being developed in the country. It has already promised access and loans for potential vaccines to a number of lower- and middle-income nations – a move the Chinese leadership may see as a better bet for its diplomatic agenda than joining the WHO-backed scheme, observers say. Along with China, the United States and Russia were also conspicuously absent from the list of 156 countries that have signed up for the programme, known as the COVAX facility.

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