Coronavirus: 11,500 doses of BioNTech’s vaccine arrive in China

German pharmaceutical group BioNTech announced today that it has sent 11,500 doses of its Covid-19 vaccine to China to be initially administered to German expatriates, marking the first shipment of non-Chinese vaccines against the novel coronavirus to China.

BioNTech highlighted that the shipment, which arrived in China on Wednesday, included both the original Covid-19 vaccine targeting the original strain of the coronavirus and the updated vaccine against the BA.4/BA.5 sub-variants of the Omicron variant.

“The arrival of the vaccine doses in mainland China is a major milestone for us as joint partners with Fosun Pharma and our efforts to address this pandemic,” said Sean Maret, head of business and commercial services at BioNTech.

The vaccines are expected to be available in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenyang and Chengdu, BioNTech said.

The German group is working with Chinese pharmaceutical company Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical to deliver the vaccines to greater China.

The mission comes as Beijing lifts a strict lockdown regime known as the “zero Covid” policy, in a move that has led to a surge in cases. China has until now insisted on using only domestically produced vaccines for its own population. These are not based on Western mRNA technology.

BioNTech’s vaccines will be sent to German companies in China as well as embassy locations, and talks are underway with other European Union member state governments to make them accessible to citizens and other nationalities, a source with knowledge of the matter said yesterday.

China would have to approve expanding access beyond the roughly 20,000 German nationals living in China, the source said.

A French health ministry official said today that France has not yet decided how best to vaccinate French expatriates in China, noting that Paris is closely monitoring the situation.

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