China is heightening its barriers to Australian imports in a pressure campaign that began in April, after Australia started to call for an inquiry into the origins of COVID-19. Meanwhile, Beijing is working to limit the independence of an expected WHO-led team.
After a 17-year-old garment factory worker in Kashgar, Xinjiang tested positive for COVID-19, authorities quickly tested all 4.75 million residents of the Kashgar area, finding 164 cases, all without symptoms.
A small COVID-19 cluster has emerged in Qingdao, China, breaking the country’s nearly two-month streak of no locally transmitted symptomatic cases. All nine million Qingdao residents will be screened for the virus this week in response.
Filling yet another void in global leadership left by President Trump, China said that it had joined COVAX, the World Health Organization–backed program to fund and coordinate the equitable global distribution of a COVID-19 vaccine.
With less than four weeks until the election, Trump is again ramping up his efforts to blame China for his failure to contain the coronavirus. Polls indicate that voters will not buy this.
China has already vaccinated vast numbers of essential workers and state-owned enterprise employees without a conventional clinical trial process. As soon as this month, however, Beijing may give official approval to a clinically tested vaccine, and begin public rollout in November.
With U.S.-China relations worsening and Trump blaming a “China plague” for ruining the economy, Chinese immigrant communities are more engaged in this election than ever. Whether that translates into voting, however, remains to be seen.
China, under an emergency use authorization, has vaccinated an unspecified number of essential workers outside of clinical trials since July 22, a top health official revealed. At the same time, clinical trials for China’s four COVID-19 vaccine candidates are expanding overseas.
Four vaccines developed by Chinese companies have moved on to Phase 3 trials, accounting for half of the global candidates at that final stage of human testing before approval.