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EU Health Commissioner: Cypriot politician Stella Kyriakides
Photo: POOL / REUTERS
To contain the corona wave there, the European Union has officially offered China free vaccines.
The EU Commissioner responsible for health, Stella Kyriakides, has made a corresponding offer to the leadership in Beijing, said a spokesman for the EU Commission in Brussels.
He thus confirmed a report in the »Financial Times«.
China has not yet responded, it said.
The spokesman did not provide any information on the number of vaccines offered or the manufacturers.
However, the Foreign Ministry in Beijing initially rejected the offer indirectly.
At the daily press conference in the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said on Tuesday that the vaccination rate in the country and the capacities in the hospitals were increasing, and that the stocks of vaccines were "adequate".
China has set up the world's largest COVID vaccine production lines, with an annual production capacity of over 7 billion doses and an annual output of over 5.5 billion doses, she said.
This has ensured that all people who are eligible for vaccination have access to COVID vaccines.
So far, only vaccines manufactured in the country can be vaccinated in China for local people.
Before Christmas, however, the federal government had received permission to have Germans in China vaccinated with the active substance from Biontech and immediately had the first doses flown to Beijing.
On Wednesday, the EU states want to discuss a joint response to the latest corona wave in China.
Some member states have already introduced compulsory tests for travelers from the People's Republic.
German doctors are also calling for an EU-wide test requirement for travelers from the People's Republic, but the government in Berlin is currently rejecting this.
China calls entry rules 'discriminatory'
Mao Ning was critical of the measures that some countries have adopted for travelers from China.
Responses should be "science-based and appropriate."
“Nobody should seize the opportunity to carry out political manipulations or discriminatory reactions.” Since 2020, China itself has imposed strict entry restrictions, has hardly issued any visas and is still demanding a quarantine until December.
After almost three years of lockdowns, mass testing and forced quarantine, China abruptly announced an end to its zero-Covid policy on December 7th.
The most populous country is currently experiencing a huge corona wave, which particularly affects people who are old or have previous illnesses.
Hospitals are overwhelmed, crematoria can't cremate the corpses fast enough.
It is estimated that tens of thousands may have died.
China no longer publishes figures on the infection situation.
According to officially unconfirmed internal estimates, 248 million people or 18 percent of the population were infected with Corona in the first three weeks of December alone.
The wave has peaked in major cities and is sweeping rural areas this month, state media said.
The EU authority initially sees no consequences for the situation in Europe
According to the EU health authority ECDC, the massive corona wave in China will initially have no impact on the epidemiological situation in Europe.
"The variants circulating in China are already circulating in the EU, and as such do not pose a challenge to the immune response of citizens of the European Union and European Economic Area (EEA)," it said in a statement on Tuesday.
There is also a relatively high immunity and vaccination rate among EU and EEA citizens.
The authority is monitoring the situation more closely, working closely with the World Health Organization and is in regular contact with the Chinese authorities, it said.
However, there is still a lack of reliable data on Covid 19 cases, deaths and the situation in hospitals and intensive care units in China.
col/Reuters/dpa