China floats 3 proposals on COVID -19 cooperation for SA including Bangladesh

China on Tuesday proposed three proposals including setting up a “Covid Emergency Medical Storage Facility” for five South Asian nations including Bangladesh at a Beijing-led foreign minister-level virtual meeting among the nations.

“At the meeting, we laid emphasis on cooperation and partnership (on COVID-19),” Foreign Minister Dr AK Abdul Momen told media at a briefing after the meeting at his residence in the capital.

Apart from setting up the medical storage facilities, Momen said, China also proposed for building a development center to deal with post-Covid poverty and an e-Commerce Forum for boosting the South Asian business.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi invited his counterparts of five South Asian countries – Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan – in the virtual meeting.

Momen said Dhaka proposed for inclusion of oxygen supplies along with vaccines at the China proposed Emergency Medical Storage Facility.

Mentioning that the location of storage facilities is yet to finalize, Momen said, Dhaka suggested building the storage near to coastal belt for better transportation.

The South Asian nations can get access to the emergency supply of that storage in the time of their urgent need.

Momen said that East Asian countries by now set up such kind of vaccine storage for their member states.

The Chinese initiative came amid a production shortfall of vaccines while most South Asian nations witnessed a massive coronavirus surge.

Referring to Bangladesh’s contribution to the India-led SAARC COVID emergency fund last year, Momen said Dhaka believes in multilateralism.

“We will do everything for the welfare of Bangladesh,” he added.

Momen said Beijing will give six lakh doses of vaccine as a gift while Dhaka is planning to purchase more vaccines from China.

He said Bangladesh is up to allow emergency use of Russian and Chinese vaccines as those are yet to get approval from WHO. “We’ll get the vaccine wherever we get it,” he added.

However, he said, it would take minimum two weeks to complete the process to get any vaccine from Russia, China or the USA.

Bangladesh is a prime recipient of Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccines produced in India’s Serum Institute, but the alarming surge of infection cases in India has created uncertainty over its expected availability in due time.

Under an agreement of getting 30 million doses from India, Bangladesh is supposed to receive five million each month, but after getting seven million of doses, Dhaka is yet to receive the second consignment that was scheduled to arrive here by March.

“We are keeping continuous contact with India to get our vaccine soon,” he said adding that lastly, Dhaka urged New Delhi to send at least three million doses of vaccine now.

While talking to BSS, on Monday, Momen said Bangladesh’s decision to join the Chinese COVID- cooperation platform for South Asian nations would not affect Dhaka-New Delhi ties “in no way”.

The foreign minister said Bangladesh has been maintaining a geopolitical balance with both India and China.

“We are with India, we are with China as well . . . we don’t have any biased view in our bilateral relations with these two nations,” Momen added.

He reminded that Bangladesh’s participation in the Chinese Road and Belt initiative “didn’t affect our relationship (with India)”.

On January 21, Bangladesh received its first-ever COVID-19 vaccine consignment while India sent 20 million doses as a gift as part of their neighborhood plus policy.

Later, during the visit of Indian premier Narendra Modi here, Bangladesh also got 1.2 million doses of vaccine as a gift.

Apart from the gift, Bangladesh purchased those 30 million doses of India-made vaccine under a tripartite memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed on November 5 and a subsequent agreement on December 13 among the Bangladesh government, Beximco Pharmaceuticals Ltd (BPL) and the Serum Institute.

Indian opposition leaders recently demanded an immediate moratorium on the vaccine export fearing that the country could run out of inoculation for its own citizens prompting Dhaka to vigorously hunt for other sources including China and Russia.

Last week, a spokesperson of the Indian high commission here said that India would continue to do its best to support the vaccine rollout in neighborhood countries.

“We can only share what is actually available and the fact is that there is a huge amount of demand and not enough supply,” he told media.

Source: BSS