China gives Belarus $25mn in humanitarian aid since April 2020

November 14, BPN. China has provided Belarus with $25 million worth of humanitarian aid since April 2020, the Belarusian health ministry has said.

This money was used to deliver to Belarus personal protective equipment, medical and diagnostic equipment and vaccines against COVID-19.

On November 12, a new humanitarian shipment from China arrived at a Belarusian warehouse. Two million disposable syringes and the same number of doses of the Vero Cell vaccine would be sent to the provinces after quality control. In all, Beijing has provided about five million doses of vaccine to Minsk on a humanitarian basis in 2021-2022. Belarus has bought 4.6 million more doses on its own.

The Belarus-China cooperation in the fight against coronavirus “can rightly be called exemplary,” Health Minister Dźmitryj Pinievič said on November 14.

In addition to Vero Cell, Belarus relies on Russian vaccines Sputnik V and Sputnik Light, and on Cuba’s Soberana Plus.

Alaksandr Łukašenka spoke out against buying Western vaccines, which, he argued, would make his opponents prone to western influence.

On December 24, 2021 media reported that Belarus had not accepted western vaccines offered by the EU free of charge in the framework of the Eastern Partnership program. Former EU Ambassador to Belarus Dirk Schuebel told Zerkalo that the bloc had allocated €2.5 billion for this purpose, but there was no response from Belarus. He said that in other Eastern Partnership countries, about a third of vaccines were provided by the EU.