Chinese Government donates 500,000 doses of the Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccine worth $9 million in June 2021

The Chinese Government delivered 500,000 donated doses of Sinopharm Covid-19 vaccines to the Government of Vietnam on June 20, 2021. On June 23, Vietnam announced a plan in which Quang Ninh was to recieve 230,000 doses and the two coastal provinces of Thai Binh were to receive 140,000 doses each. It is unclear whether or not they went through with this plan. The vaccines were donated with the intent of being administered to Chinese nationals working in Vietnam, Vietnamese citizens who intend to work or study in China, and residents in provinces bordering China, according to the Vietnamese Ministry of Health. A vaccine handover ceremony took place virtually between the Ministry of Health of Việt Nam (represented by deputy health minister Trần Văn Thuấn) and the Ministry of Commerce of China (represented by vice minister Qian Keming). Vietnam was hesitant to accept this donation due to high rates of vaccine hesitancy. The Sinopharm vaccine had received emergency approval for release by the Vietnamese government on June 3, 2021.

Additional details

1. According to the UNICEF COVID-19 Vaccine Market Dashboard, the price of a single Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccine dose is $18 (https://www.oecd.org/officialdocuments/publicdisplaydocumentpdf/cote=DCD/DAC/STAT(2022)33&docLanguage=En). As such, AidData has estimated the monetary value of the June 2021 donation as $9 million.

Number of official sources

2

Number of total sources

24