China pledged to provide two billion vaccine doses this year

PARIS: China pledged to provide two billion vaccine doses this year to combat surging infections. According to an AFP count, the number of Covid-19 infections globally reached 200 million on Thursday.

The highly contagious strain is fueling a rebound in the epidemic, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region, where Thailand, Indonesia, and Japan continued to see new records, and the city  Melbourne went into another lockdown.

According to AFP’s tally, the number of daily new cases has increased by 68 percent since mid-June.

However, as more people across the world get vaccinated, particularly in richer countries, fatalities are rising at a slower rate, up 20% since July, according to the statistics.

“China will strive to deliver two billion doses of vaccines to the world” this year and pledges $100 million (85 million euros) to the Covax system for distributing jobs to the poorest countries, President Xi Jinping said in remarks reported by state broadcaster CCTV.

After months in which Beijing could boast of its success in containing infections,  officials in Beijing are now again dealing with an increase in cases, notably in Wuhan, the 11-million-strong city where the first widespread Covid-19 epidemic occurred.

On Wednesday, the number of new cases in Thailand surpassed 20,000 for the first time, and then again on Thursday.

Africa also set a new record with 6,400 fatalities in the week ending August 1, the highest in the pandemic’s history, according to the World Health Organization.

Nkengasong, the director of the Africa Centres for Disease Control, said he had contracted the infection last week despite being fully vaccinated.

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