As the numbers of Covid-19 cases across the globe have dropped for a fifth consecutive week in 2021, Chinese scientists said the pandemic was possibly “tapering-off”, which would allow for the relaxation of global travel restrictions as early as April this year. Yet they warned a new virus variant prevailing in Europe and the U.S. and uneven vaccine distribution may drag down the global effort in battling the pandemic. They pointed out that implementation of stronger public health measures, stricter adherence to the rules out of fear of faster-spreading variants, and the natural seasonality of coronavirus have all played a constructive part in the recent decline. “Based on the current pace, most wealthy countries and countries with frequent people exchanges will realize mass inoculation by April or May this year, and would pave the way for international travel,” said a Beijing-based immunologist. Many Western countries, such as the U.S. and the UK, are placing all their hopes on the vaccines, and encouraging their people to get vaccinated, the Global Times reports.

Chinese customs have tested 1.49 million samples of cold-chain imports, and 79 of them had returned positive for the coronavirus, the General Administration of Customs (GAC) said, while 56 foreign manufacturers involved in shipping contaminated food products to China have been suspended from filing import applications for one to four weeks, as a preventive measure. “We have suspended imports of 129 suppliers from 21 countries where employees had been infected with the virus. Among them, 110 companies voluntarily halted exports to China,” GAC said.

A source at China’s leading vaccine producer Sinovac said that preliminary results its vaccine can neutralize the variants detected in the UK and South Africa, though a detailed report by scientists has not yet been published. Another Chinese vaccine producer – Sinopharm – also said in January that its vaccine is also effective against the variants. The immunologist said that although the new variants raise concerns, the decline in cases offers an opportunity to prepare for the months ahead. “The drop offers space for us to double down on those effective measures, such as speeding up vaccine inoculation, social distancing and basic hygiene measures, and prepare for any possible comeback,” he said.

China has already approved four vaccines for conditional market use.  An inactivated vaccine developed by the Beijing Biological Products Institute under Sinopharm’s subsidiary, China National Biotec Group (CNBG), was China’s first Covid-19 vaccine to receive conditional approval for the domestic market on December 31, 2020. It was followed by CoronaVac, developed by Chinese pharmaceutical firm Sinovac Biotech. A second vaccine produced by Sinopharm at its Wuhan Institute  also received approval. Besides those three inactivated vaccines, CanSino’s vaccine is China’s first Ad5-nCoV  vaccine. It is a recombinant adenovirus vector vaccine jointly developed by CanSino Biologics and researchers from the Institute of Military Medicine under the Academy of Military Sciences led by General Chen Wei. This vaccine only requires one dose. 

Chinese syringe and needle suppliers are expanding production after orders continue to increase worldwide, and the U.S. ramps up its Covid-19 vaccinations. Around 80% of the needles and syringes in use in the U.S. originate from China. The pressing demand has driven up the prices of raw materials, including plastics and steel, which are ultimately reflected in the market prices of syringes. Currently, the price of a syringe has increased from CNY0.1 per unit to CNY0.3, while prices in the U.S. are even higher at CNY0.5 to CNY0.8, increasing by 800%, because suppliers with FDA markings are very limited, an industry insider told the Global Times. Despite the rocketing prices, the cost for a syringe that is made in China is still lower than one in the U.S., as in addition to the low labor cost and adequate supply chain, mass production has reduced costs.

Health experts believe an uneven vaccine rollout will  undermine global efforts to contain the virus. People from 130 countries are still waiting for vaccines, while wealthy nations are receiving doses from multiple vaccine makers. According to UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres just 10 countries had administered 75% of all vaccinations. China has promised to offer vaccine assistance to 53 developing countries, and has sent its vaccines to 22 countries.

Direct flights between China and France have been cut after French authorities said that two flights by Chinese carriers were cancelled. Flight MU570 of Chinese Eastern Airlines, originally scheduled to fly from Paris to Shanghai on February 28, and flight CZ348 of China Southern Airlines from Paris to Guangzhou on March 4, were canceled by France’s aviation authorities. It was the fourth cancelled flight for Chinese carriers since February 17. The move came after China canceled an Air France flight for two weeks after seven passengers were found to be infected with Covid-19 when they arrived in China.

Chinese health experts believe the EU’s plan to issue digital vaccine travel certificates or passports is not feasible scientifically at a time when new variants emerge and raise doubts about the efficacy of vaccines. They warn that issuing the vaccine passports may trigger a new wave of the pandemic in Europe. However, experts add that the idea may be feasible in the long run, and a globally recognized vaccine certificate should be established under the framework of the World Health Organization (WHO) and could be introduced for international events such as the Beijing Winter Olympics in 2022. A Beijing-based immunologist who requested anonymity told the Global Times that vaccine passports could provide convenience for travel, but so far it is a purely political move to promote vaccinations and economic recovery. As the WHO has predicted that vaccines in some developing countries, especially those in Africa, would only be available by 2023, the vaccine passports in the EU would block travel from developing countries, which is unfair and discriminatory, the immunologist added.

This overview is based on reporting by the China Daily, Shanghai Daily and Global Times.

Beijing has launched a massive Covid-19 vaccination campaign after it basically finished the inoculation of key groups around the Spring Festival holidays, with many districts expected to complete the vaccination drive in May. No new domestically transmitted confirmed Covid-19 cases have been reported on the Chinese mainland since February 15, according to the National Health Commission. The Covid-19 threat level in the last existing medium-risk areas on the Chi?nese mainland has been downgraded to low, marking the elimination of all medium- and high-risk areas for Covid-19.  Wangkui county in Heilongjiang province has been downgraded from medium to low risk as no new confirmed or asymptomatic cases were reported over the past two weeks. Shijiazhuang, capital of Hebei province, also downgraded its last medium-risk district.

Beijing’s most populous district – Chaoyang – opened  vaccination venues gradually to the general public aged 18 to 59 starting on February 18. Daxing and 15 sub-districts in Xicheng started their vaccination programs on the previous day. Other districts including Fengtai, Shunyi, Fangshan and Miyun started their campaigns already before the Spring Festival. As of January 16, China’s capital city had inoculated 1.7 million residents and could vaccinate another 100,000 to 150,000 a day. The emergency inoculation program had administered two doses to 2.5 million people by about February 10. Beijing has more than 20 million residents and 70% to 85% of them need to be vaccinated to achieve herd immunity, which would be 14 million people or more. Experts estimated that the city now can inoculate at least 200,000 people a day and the capacity will further expand. 

Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam and several secretaries took their first shot of the Chinese mainland-developed Sinovac Covid-19 vaccine in a live broadcast on February 22.  Lam said at a press conference that the vaccine brings light in the fight against the epidemic. The first batch of 1 million doses of the Sinovac vaccine arrived in Hong Kong last week, and the first batch of 1 million doses co-developed by Chinese company Fosun and German vaccine producer BioNTech will arrive by the end of February. Authorities said they will launch online reservations for vaccinations, which will start on February 26. The vaccination is free of charge in Hong Kong. Hong Kong residents will be able to get vaccinated at 29 centers across the city with five offering Sinovac and 24 offering BioNtech vaccines. The Hong Kong SAR government has signed a contract with mainland vaccine producer Sinovac to buy 7.5 million doses of CoronaVac. It has also reached agreements with two other vaccine producers, Fosun Pharma and  AstraZeneca to purchase 7.5 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines from each. Hong Kong’s Center for Health Protection reported 16 new confirmed cases of Covid-19 on February 22, taking the total to 10,884. Of the new infections, 13 were locally transmitted. 

Chinese experts warned that a more dangerous virus could emerge if SARS-CoV-2 recombines with other coronaviruses. Bette Korber, a scientist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in the U.S., earlier this month said she discovered evidence of the new strain, which was a recombination of the variants detected in the UK and California and which may be responsible for a recent wave of cases in Los Angeles, according to the London-based New Scientist Magazine. Recombination can be viewed as a greater variation than mutations discovered previously. But as long as it is still limited within the SARS-CoV-2 strains, it would not largely affect the virus’ antigenicity, a Beijing-based vaccine expert told the Global Times. However, the expert warned that the situation would be worse if a recombination occurs between SARS-CoV-2 and another coronavirus – for example, the SARS virus. If confirmed, the recombination would be the first to be detected in this pandemic.

A number of countries, including Hungary, Senegal, Morocco and Zimbabwe have received batches of coronavirus vaccines during the Chinese New Year holiday. Hungary sent a chartered flight to Beijing to pick up the first batch of 550,000 Sinopharm vaccine doses, making Hungary the first European Union member country to purchase a China-produced vaccine. Morocco welcomed its first shipment of vaccines from China on January 27, and initiated its nationwide inoculation plan the next day. Feng Duojia, President of the China Vaccine Industry Association, previously told the Global Times that he estimated China’s total Covid-19 vaccine production capacity will eventually reach 4 billion doses per year, covering 40% of global demand. 

This overview is based on reporting by the China Daily, Shanghai Daily and Global Times.

As China reported no new domestically transmitted Covid-19 cases in the run up to Chinese New Year on February 12, several cities eased travel restrictions, allowing people with a green health code to travel more freely. The two airports in Beijing also adjusted their entrance policies, allowing passengers to use digital health codes recognized anywhere in the country, not limited to Beijing, as per original requirements. Ordinary people from Covid-19 low-risk regions are not required to undergo nucleic acid tests before traveling within or outside their residential province as a green health code will be sufficient. On February 14, a single new domestically transmitted case was reported in Hebei province.

The latest round of infections started with one case in Sichuan province on December 17, 2020. A total of 2,071 confirmed domestic cases were reported till February 7, when no new cases were reported. The hardest hit area in this outbreak was Hebei, the province surrounding Beijing. 

As more Covid-19 vaccines come to market, China is also focussing on the transport of vaccines. On February 2, the Ministry of Transport qualified 28 logistic companies for Covid-19 vaccines transportation, of which 15 are professional third-party pharmaceutical cold chain logistics enterprises. “Our company provided different sizes of refrigerators for vaccines to international customers,” a manager of CIMC Cold Cloud Supply Chain Management (Beijing) Co, told the Global Times. The company has refrigerators ranging between 4 liters and 3,000 liters. A 130-liter refrigerator can hold 1,000 doses of Covid-19 vaccines. Currently, the most commonly used refrigerated vehicle in the Chinese market is the 6.2-meter model, with a loading capacity of around 35 cubic meters, according to  research by the Healthcare Logistics Association of China  (CHLA). China has more than 10,000 special refrigerated vehicles for the cold chain of medicine and the country can refit about 50,000 refrigerated vehicles annually, which can be further expanded according to demand. The monthly actual operating mileage of cold-chain vehicles is about 15,000 kilometers. From September 2020 onwards, the CHLA has carried out a survey showing that about 70% of the enterprises plan to add new refrigerated vehicles in 2021, increasing the number by about 20%, the Global Times reports. 

A new vaccine candidate developed by CanSino Biologics and PLA General Chen Wei of the Academy of Military Medical Sciences is a one-shot vaccine which can be stored at temperatures between 2ºC and 8ºC, which is much higher than for example the Pfizer vaccine. CanSino’s vaccine showed 65.7% efficacy in preventing symptomatic cases and a 90.98% success rate in stopping severe disease, according to preliminary results. It is an Ad5-nCoV-based vaccine. 

The Huanan seafood market in Wuhan may not have been the original site of the Covid-19 outbreak, and samples of bats and pangolins did not provide evidence of the coronavirus origin. It is extremely unlikely that the virus leaked from a lab in Wuhan, according to a report jointly published by experts from China and the World Health Organization (WHO). The WHO experts who visited Wuhan also said the search for the origin of the coronavirus will not be limited to any single location and would continue outside China. The virus was most likely introduced from an intermediate host to humans. The virus could also have been transmitted from frozen food, Peter Ben Embarek, a Swiss food safety scientist leading the WHO team, said at a WHO press conference in Wuhan. Antibody testing of 11,000 samples from animals, including pigs, cows, goats, chickens and ducks came back negative, and swab testing of 12,000 samples from different animals was also negative, meaning the intermediate host between bats and humans has not been found yet. Peter Daszak, the head of the New York-based EcoHealth Alliance and a member of the WHO team, told the Global Times that the next location for their investigation is Southeast Asia.

Several cities in China have issued consumption vouchers and offered a number of benefits to bolster consumer confidence during the Spring Festival holiday. Beijing released digital consumption vouchers worth CNY40 million on six e-commerce platforms, starting from February 12. Hangzhou in Zhejiang province, home to several e-commerce companies, decided to give CNY1,000 per person  staying in the city during the holidays. Tech hub Shenzhen in Guangdong province offered free vocational training to workers staying in the city during the holidays. China’s per capita disposal income grew 2.1% in 2020 after adjusting for inflation, but the per capita consumption expenditure dropped 4% year-on-year, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said.

Covid-19 infections in China seem to be waning as large cities of Beijing and Shanghai and most Covid-19 affected regions in the latest virus spike, reported zero new local cases on February 7 and 8. Chinese medical experts said that this winter epidemic outbreak has been basically brought under control.

Meanwhile, Sinovac Life Science’s CoronaVac vaccine has received conditional market approval. Like the experimental vaccine developed by the state-owned  Sinopharm – the first vaccine to be approved for public use on December 30 – the Sinovac vaccine uses inactivated viral particles to trigger an immune response and requires two doses administered at 14 to 28 days apart. Sinovac also released phase-I and phase-II clinical trial data on healthy adults aged 60 years old and above, which shows the vaccine will be safe and stable in older adults. The trials included 422 adults aged 60 years and older in Renqiu city in Hebei province between May and June 2020. Sinovac’s findings were published in the Lancet medical journal. It was the first report of an inactivated SARS-CoV-2 vaccine tested in adults aged 60 years old and above. Results of its phase-three trials in Brazil, Chile, Indonesia and Turkey involving about 25,000 participants have not yet been published. CoronaVac had already been approved for emergency use, but can now be given to the general public.

Chinese pharmaceutical company Fosun Pharma, a partner of German biotech company BioNTech, is on track to seek approval from the Chinese regulator for the Covid-19 mRNA vaccine to be used in China, Hui Aimin, President of Global R&D and Chief Medical Officer of Fosun Pharma, told the Global Times in an exclusive interview, noting that he is “very optimistic” about mRNA vaccine development in China. Another Chinese vaccine producer, CanSino Biologics, which uses an Ad5-nCoV vaccine, announced it has met its pre-specified primary safety and efficacy criteria at interim analysis. The Ad5-nCoV’s phase-II and phase-III trials have involved elderly participants, with no serious adverse reactions reported.

Chinese syringe makers are warning that they may only be able to fulfill some orders as late as June, as global coronavirus vaccination programs put unprecedented levels of pressure on their production lines. Companies said that they were working around the clock, raising prices and trying to expand production. China and India are the world’s biggest producers of syringes. Zhejiang KangKang Medical Devices General Manager Guo Chun said the company began receiving export contracts for  10 million to 20 million syringes each in December, compared with order sizes of about 5 million each before the pandemic, due to overseas vaccination programs. The company, a unit of Wanbangde Pharmaceutical Holding, was adding capacity to quadruple its production for certain types of syringes by May, but until then can only partly fulfill large orders, he said. Prices of syringes have more than tripled from CNY0.1 each before the outbreak to more than CNY0.3 now, KangKang’s Guo said. 

Shenzhen Kangtai Biological Products said it had completed a facility designed to be able to produce 400 million doses of AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine per year. “Kangtai is actively pushing forward procedures for the vaccine’s clinical trial and registration in China, and has completed a manufacturing plant and started trial production,” the Shenzhen-based firm said in a press release. The firm obtained rights to supply the AZD1222 vaccine, developed by the Anglo-Swedish drugmaker and Oxford University, in China’s mainland last year in return for having capacity to produce at least 200 million doses by the end of 2021. The vaccine might be approved for use in China by mid-2021 after the required safety and efficacy data are collected. 

Studies into the clusters of Covid-19 cases in recent months show that contaminated cold chain food products are the major cause of the outbreaks, highlighting the need for protection of workers, experts said. But according to Liu Zhaoping, Researcher at the China National Center for Food Safety Risk Assessment, “the likelihood of food-to-human transmission is considered lower than with other routes of transmission.” Investigations into the source of the outbreaks in cities across China, including Beijing and the port cities of Dalian, Liaoning province, and Qingdao, Shandong province, found many  could be traced to workers at cold storage areas, seafood processing plants and markets selling imported frozen food products, he said.  An investigation into the Covid-19 outbreak in Qingdao for the first time isolated live samples of the coronavirus taken from imported frozen seafood packaging, proving the possibility of virus transmission via frozen food, according to a study by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention in October. Recent studies have also found that containers may harbor live coronavirus in low winter temperatures. All of China’s major infection clusters since December were caused by inbound travelers or contaminated cold-chain goods. 

A 13-member team of the World Health Organization (WHO) has conducted field visits in Wuhan on the origins of the coronavirus. They visited the Huanan Seafood Market – were the first Covid-19 cases were detected in December 2019 – the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), and two hospitals where early cases were treated. Zeng Guang, Chief Epidemiologist of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, told the Global Times that after the trip to Wuhan, the WHO should also conduct virus-tracing work in other countries. With more evidence of early cases emerging in other countries, including the U.S., Spain, Italy, France, Brazil and India, some even earlier than the cases reported in Wuhan, the WHO should follow those clues and continue carrying out field studies in the coming months, some experts suggested. The WHO should conduct virus-tracing work in other countries, as it is a global pandemic, and the origins cannot be found in just a single place, Feng Duojia, President of the China Vaccine Industry Association, told the Global Times. 

To avoid further spread of the coronavirus, the Chinese government has urged people to stay in the cities where they work during the Chinese New Year holiday in February. But they are still expected to make 1.15 billion trips, 60% lower than in 2019 and 20% lower than in 2020. The Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) expected to handle 8,850 flights and 540,000 passenger trips, a year-on-year decrease of 46.7% and 71.2%, respectively. The Ministry of Transport lowered the estimated number of trips from 1.7 billion to 1.15 billion, as stricter epidemic prevention measures discourage people from traveling. People who still want to travel home must present a negative nucleic acid test taken in the seven days before returning home. Airline bookings made as of January 19 for Lunar New Year travel have plunged 73.7% compared with the holiday period in 2019, according travel analytics firm ForwardKeys. A government notice said that online and offline stores and supermarkets, as well as express companies, especially those in big cities, will be supported to stay open during the holiday, so that people’s needs will be well met. More TV programs and online movies will be offered during the holiday period. In some cities, local governments are offering subsidies of up to CNY2,000 per person to people who remain in the city during the holiday.

“As most Chinese migrant workers and employees are clustered in large, coastal cities, the new policy would bring some negative impact to the consumption sector in smaller, inland areas, which would in turn drag general consumption down to some extent,” Hu Qimu, Chief Researcher at the Sinosteel Economic Research Institute, told the Global Times, adding that some industries might also be negatively influenced, especially culture-related industries and tourism. But he argued that such impact will be limited and will not halt the general trend of economic recovery in China, citing several reasons including government support and manufacturing momentum.

Companies and experts told the Global Times that residents’ not going home for the Spring Festival is a bonus for China’s manufacturing industry, as companies will not have to worry about the usual post-holiday staff shortages, and they will be able to continue to fulfill orders. China’s e-commerce firm Alibaba told the Global Times in a statement that the low-mobility policy has already promoted sales of pre-prepared Spring Festival eve dinners and other products. Sales of many home appliances have risen over 100%, or even 1,000%, the statement said.

There was a small Covid-19 outbreak in Shanghai, which has been brought under control, according to Mayor Gong Zheng. There have been 16 cases since January 21. More than 41,000 people have been screened, all negative. In Beijing, people from low-risk areas in China arriving between January 28 and March 15 must show negative results for Covid-19 tests taken within seven days before entry, Xu Hejian, Spokesman of the Beijing city government, said. Visitors from areas of high- or medium-risk areas where infections have been found, or from cities that are under lockdown, will not be allowed to enter Beijing, according to existing rules. After arrival, travelers who are allowed in must monitor their health for signs of infection for 14 days, though they will be allowed to move freely, and Covid-19 tests will also be performed on the seventh and 14^th day, Xu said.

The Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) has ordered airlines to refund tickets without charge to travelers who decide to cancel their travel plans during the Spring Festival travel period from January 28 to March 8. The policy is intended to minimize mobility during the holiday period and reduce the risk of Covid-19 transmission. “Chinese airlines’ profits will worsen, as load factors and fares are already very low, and airlines will also face a cash crunch,” Zheng Hongfeng, CEO of information provider VariFlight told the Global Times. CAAC predicted that the number of travelers in the coming 40-day travel peak will be around 39 million, almost the same as last year. The average airfare had fallen to CNY651.36, the lowest for Spring Festival air travel in five years, travel website qunar.com said. For example, the fare from Beijing to Harbin in Heilongjiang province on February 10, one day ahead of the Lunar New Year eve, is about CNY800 or 45% off the regular price, while the lowest fare from Beijing to Sanya in Hainan province is around CNY700, 77% off.

China planned to vaccinate 50 million people before Chinese New Year on February 12. Residential communities in Beijing have started registering residents between 18 and 59 last week. They are expected to receive the vaccine after Spring Festival. Feng Duojia, President of the China Vaccine Industry Association, told the Global Times that elderly people are given priority over the general public in China, but since the related data of elderly people from clinical trials have not been released, it is understandable to start the vaccination campaign for the general public. Yang Zhanqiu, a virologist at Wuhan University, said that about half of seniors have pre-existing conditions who may develop severe side effects after vaccination, and China has to ensure their safety. 

The Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced on January 31 that the country has so far administered more than 24 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines. There were 2,016 domestically transmitted Covid-19 cases in January – the highest number since March 2020. Seven Chinese-made Covid-19 vaccines have entered phase-three clinical trials, while nine others have started lower-level trials. Two vaccines are currently used in China: one from the China National Biotec Group and CoronaVac, developed by Sinovac Biotech. Both are inactivated vaccines.

Meanwhile, Hungary has become the first country in the European Union to use a Chinese vaccine, which will allow the vaccination of  2.5 million of its 9.7 million people. Delivery of the Sinopharm vaccine will be spread out over four months. Sinopharm has been approved for use in several countries, including Serbia and Pakistan, while Turkey received a second shipment of a vaccine produced Sinovac.