Hangzhou Municipal Government contributes to first batch of medical supplies donated to Argentina in March 2020 (linked to #91387)

On March 17, 2020 – at a meeting between the Chinese Ambassador to Argentina, Zou Xiaoli, and the President of Argentina, Alberto Fernández – the Chinese Embassy committed a batch of supplies to the Argentine Government to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. The supplies were to be granted by a group of organizations consisting primarily of Chinese government institutions and state-owned enterprises. The entire batch included the following supplies: 5,000 sets of protective clothing, 66,000 N95 masks, 130,000 medical masks, 2,000 goggles, 5,000 isolation suits, 20,000 pairs of gloves, 2,500 reagents (testing kits), 550 hand-held forehead thermometers, and 3 sets of temperature monitoring equipment. The group of donors included the following organizations: the Hangzhou Municipal People's Government; the Xiaoshan District People's Government; the People's Government of Louta Town, (in the Xiaoshan District, Hangzhou Municipality); the China Shenzhen Mammoth Foundation; the BGI Group; the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), Argentina Branch; Bank of China, Buenos Aires Branch; COFCO Argentina Branch; China Communications Group, Argentina Branch; National Pharmaceutical Group (Sinopharm); Huawei Argentina; Gold Wind Technology, Argentina Branch; and the Argentina-China Trade and Investment Promotion Association. The materials granted by each donor arrived on different dates. On March 27, 2020, the materials donated by the Hangzhou Municipal Government, the Xiaoshan District Government, and the Louta Town Government arrived in Buenos Aires and were handed over to officials from the Argentine Ministry of Health. The Chinese Embassy in Argentina reported that these three donors provided the "main part" of the supplies included in the first batch. Both the Chinese Embassy and reporting from La Nación indicated multiple shipments were used to transfer this part of the donation. According to the Argentine Ministry of Health's response to a public information request, as reported by La Nación, the Hangzhou Municipal Government's portion of the donation included 50,000 N95 masks, 105,000 medical masks, 2000 goggles (Hangzhou Shanyou Medical Equipment Co. brand), and 1000 testing kits (Shanghai ZJ Bio-Tech Co Ltd. brand).

Additional details

1. This project is linked to Project ID#91387, which itself links to the contributions of all other donors that contributed to the first batch of supplies committed on March 17, 2020. 2. AidData has estimated the transaction amount for this donation based on price catalogues from the World Health Organization (WHO). Please see the TUFF Methodology for additional details. 3. It is possible that the donation amount attributed to Hangzhou in La Nación's reporting/per the information request from the Ministry of Health includes the amount of supplies donated by the Xiaoshan District Government in Hangzhou and the Louta Town Government. One piece of evidence to suggest this is that the number of masks said to be donated by Hangzhou (50,000 K95 + 105,000 surgical) and Xiaoshan (60,000 of an unspecified type, likely surgical) exceeds the total in the first batch. Further, there is significant ambiguity regarding the timeline – Xiaoshan's donation is reported on as if it hasn't arrived yet/"will arrive" on dates after the donation is said to have arrived in Chinese official sources. On the other hand, the donation portion attributed to Xiaoshan in Chinese Embassy sources reportedly includes thermometers, which are not included in the La Nación report about Hangzhou's donation, but are in follow up reporting about Xiaoshan's. For the time being, AidData assumes that, at the very least, all surgical masks from the first batch of supplies were donated by either the Xiaoshan District in Hangzhou, or the Hangzhou Municipality as a whole. However, this issue warrants further investigation.

Number of official sources

5

Number of total sources

9