THE QUESTION
.
"
Where are the doses, if they can't even vaccinate their populations?"
“Asked this morning by
Europe 1
, the Minister in charge of Industry, Agnès Pannier-Runacher, affirmed that China and Russia had so far vaccinated their populations less than European countries.
While Moscow is already proposing to vaccinate 50 million Europeans by the summer of 2021, Agnès Pannier-Runacher also argued that the EU should not be trapped by these “
geopolitical
schemes
”.
Has the EU in fact vaccinated more than China and Russia?
Read also: Vaccines: faced with the delays of the Commission, these European countries which are turning to China and Russia
CHECKS.
The Ourworldindata site compiles immunization data from most countries around the world over time.
Thus we can see that on February 28, the number of doses administered in China corresponded to 3.65% of its population, or nearly 51 million doses.
In the same proportions, the number of doses in Russia accounted for 3.59% of its population on March 1, or just under 5.2 million doses.
Relative to their population, France and the European Union have in fact vaccinated more massively, with on March 1 a quantity of doses administered in France representing 7.16% of the population, a figure which even reaches 7.79% in France. 'European Union.
Note that these data are very comparable to each other, since as for the AstraZeneca and Pfizer / BioNTech vaccines, the Russian vaccine Sputnik V and the main Chinese vaccine Sinopharm consist of two separate doses which must be administered in two stages.
The figures are therefore clear: the EU is far above China or Russia in doses distributed per capita.
And yet, Russia is already planning to flood Europe with its Sputnik vaccine, in particular by developing production partnerships to have it manufactured abroad.
The European Medicines Agency (EMA) began examining Sputnik V on Thursday, after its effectiveness was widely validated by the medical journal
The Lancet
and independent experts.
"
Following the approval of the AEM, we would be able to provide vaccines for 50 million Europeans from June 2021,
" Kirill Dmitriev, head of the Russian sovereign wealth fund who contributed, said in a statement this week in a statement. development of this vaccine.
Some European countries, such as Hungary, Slovakia or the Czech Republic, did not even wait for the review of the AEM to order their doses of the Russian vaccine.
Risky bet
For its part, China has also widely communicated in the local press, with a lot of graphics, on the export of its various vaccines in the world.
According to Antoine Bondaz, researcher for the Foundation for Strategic Research, 40 countries around the world have already placed an order with China, and at least 60 will end up doing so, either through purchases or through donations.
“
China is not at all in the same health emergency as Europe or Russia
, recalls Antoine Bondaz, specifying that the epidemic has been almost extinct in China since the spring of 2020.
China therefore has the considerable advantage of to be able to use part of its vaccines produced for export now.
"Of course, Beijing's goal is to vaccinate a billion Chinese by the end of the year, but the country is not in a hurry by the health imperative, and"
wants to show that it is the first to deliver its doses to the whole world
”.
“
The message is to show that vaccines from Pfizer, Moderna and others are expensive, difficult to store and reserved for rich countries.
China wants to show that its vaccines are much more accessible.
"
Read also: Covid-19: Eastern countries opt for Russian vaccine
On the Russian side, the situation is very different, with an epidemic situation which panicked in December, before falling back to around 10,000 cases per day today.
"
By exporting its vaccine especially in eastern Europe, Russia is not vaccinating as quickly as it could on national soil
," continues Antoine Bondaz.
This choice is eminently political, but the price to pay will be much greater than in China, because the health situation remains worrying in Russia.
"
In conclusion,
for "
eminently political
"
reasons
, China and Russia have in fact chosen to export their respective vaccines, to the detriment for the moment of vaccination on national soil. As a result, the European Union has indeed vaccinated twice as much, in proportion to its population, as the Chinese and the Russians. But where the risk for Beijing is almost zero, with an epidemic stopped for many months, the bet seems riskier for Moscow, where the epidemic was particularly virulent at the beginning of the year 2021.
