On Tuesday August 24, Tajik Foreign Minister met here with the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of China of Tajikistan, Mr. Liu Bing.

According to the Tajik MFA information department, the two discussed a range of issues related to the bilateral cooperation between Tajikistan and China, providing regional security, and the supply of Chinese coronavirus vaccines to Tajikistan.

To-date, China has delivered more than 2 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine to Tajikistan.  

The Beijing-based biopharmaceutical company Sinovac is behind the CoronaVac vaccine.

So far, Sinovac's CoronaVac jab has only been fully authorized for use by China.  But Beijing is also offering its vaccines around the world and has already shipped millions of doses to a number of countries.

In Asia, the biggest takers are Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Pakistan, while in the Americas, Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Colombia and Ecuador have also ordered millions of shot.

In Europe, Turkey and Ukraine have signed large contracts for CoronaVac.

Some media reports say the vaccine is thought to be particularly important for African countries where so far Zimbabwe, Somalia, Djibouti, Benin and Tunisia have received vaccines from China.

On June 1, 2021, the World Health Organization (WHO) validated the vaccine for emergency use by which time over 430 million doses of CoronaVac had already been administered globally.

According to the U.N. health agency, CoronaVac was found to be 51% effective at preventing COVID-19 in late-stage trials, and researchers say it will be key to curbing the pandemic.  This overall protection is lower than that provided by the seven other vaccines already listed by the WHO.  But, importantly, trials suggest that CoronaVac is 100% effective at preventing severe disease and death.