According to Bridge Consulting data, 36 African countries have already received vaccines from China, either through sales or donations. However, Morocco, Algeria, Egypt and Zimbabwe make up 76 percent of deliveries, with 32 million doses.
Among the Portuguese-speaking countries, Mozambique is the country that received the most doses from China - 760 thousand. Angola comes next, with 200,000, according to the consultant's data.
Globally, the African continent comes in last place among the regions of the world that received vaccines developed by Chinese pharmaceutical companies.
According to Bridge Consulting, Asia-Pacific received the largest number of Chinese vaccines, making up more than half of the doses delivered by China. Latin America and Europe come in second and third place, respectively.
However, in contrast to the other regions, the number of vaccines donated by China to Africa exceeds the number of doses sold.
As part of South-South Cooperation, China committed last February to provide covid-19 vaccines to the African continent. In addition to bilateral agreements with African countries, China has also delivered vaccines to Africa through the Covax initiative, promoted by the World Health Organization.
Brazil is the largest buyer of Chinese vaccines in Latin America, according to data distributed by Bridge Consulting.
In total, Brasilia has acquired 100 million doses of the vaccine developed by the pharmaceutical company Sinovac, which conducted Phase 3 tests in the country.
The test results, released by the São Paulo-based Butantan Institute, revealed that Sinovac's vaccine is 50.7 percent effective in preventing symptomatic infections and 83.7 percent effective in preventing mild cases that need treatment, which has sparked debate about the vaccine's use.
Brazil is also manufacturing Sinovac vaccines locally using active ingredients shipped from China.
The distribution of covid-19 vaccines have taken on a special dimension at a time when China and several Western countries are fighting for influence in different parts of the globe.
The group of countries that make up the G7 has adopted a plan to give more than 1 billion doses of covid-19 vaccines by the end of 2022, with the goal of eradicating the pandemic worldwide.
The covid-19 pandemic has caused at least 4,169,966 deaths worldwide, among more than 194.6 million cases of infection with the new coronavirus, according to the most recent tally by Agence France-Presse.
The respiratory disease is caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, detected in late 2019 in Wuhan, a city in central China, and currently with variants identified in countries such as the UK, India, South Africa, Brazil and Peru.
