China calls for more action to eliminate 'vaccine gap'

China on Monday expressed its hope countries will deliver more safe and effective vaccines to developing countries, African countries included, so as to make up the global "vaccination gap".

Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian made the remarks at a daily news briefing after Nigeria destroyed more than 1 million expired AstraZeneca vaccines which had a shelf life that gave healthcare staff only weeks to administer the jabs.

"I noticed African countries including Senegal, Malawi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo face similar problems of expired COVID-19 vaccines to varying degrees," Zhao said.

Calling vaccines a powerful weapon against the COVID-19 and lending hope to save lives, Zhao said the immunization gap between developed and developing countries was still widening and many developing countries were in the quagmire of lacking vaccines, despite the increase of global vaccine output and vaccination rate.

He stated only 5 percent of people in the low-income countries fully took the jabs and among the 1.3 billion on the African continent, only 7.5 percent were fully vaccinated.

Zhao said instead a few Western countries have hoarded vaccines in excess of their population's needs, and many doses have gone to waste.

Taking the US as an example, Zhao said statistics from the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention showed from March to September this year, at least 15.1 million doses of COVID vaccines were wasted.

Zhao stressed China was committed to making the vaccine a global public good and had provided vaccines to the world, especially developing countries.

Against the backdrop of an unchecked and resurgent pandemic, he called for countries to honor their pledges and contribute to mankind's victory over the virus.