Today I want to focus on Covid-19 and the decision of Turkey to contract with China for 50m Sinovac Biotech vaccines.
Turkish Health Minister, Mr F Koca, said Turkey prefers China’s “inactivated vaccines” to the technology of Pfizer/Moderna mRNA vaccines. Apparently Pfizer/Moderna “require difficult and costly cold-chain handling compared with China’s inactivated vaccines”. The UAE and Bahrein have officially registered the Sinopharm vaccine and inoculations have already started for residents in Abu Dhabi. Morocco has ordered 10m doses and Jordan is carrying out Sinopharm clinical trials.
There is a long way to go and the effectiveness of the vaccine needs to be assessed – as do all vaccines including Pfizer, Moderna and Oxford. And the organisation of supply lines in China will be tested as overseas demand is high. But China’s prominence as a supplier has escaped the attention of the Western media – too pre-occupied with “Trump tariffs + de-coupling”.
